


been a forest burning

by oflights



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Arranged Marriage, Bonding, Knotting, M/M, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 12:05:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 53,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13501364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oflights/pseuds/oflights
Summary: Omegas have to be bonded by 25 to keep playing in the NHL; either they have someone they've chosen themselves, or the league makes them pick from an anonymous pool of alphas. Tyson turns 24 with no prospects and no real plans for any just yet, and Gabe knows that as his captain and friend, he has to help him out. So he does.





	been a forest burning

**Author's Note:**

> God I have SO MANY notes I'm sorry. So. 
> 
> \- Standard disclaimer you all hate when I write a trope or two: I have no idea what I'm doing! Making it all up! True apologies if this offends any a/b/o purists as a result!
> 
> \- There are some dubious consent elements to this which I feel are inherent in arranged marriage; everything sexual that happens here is explicitly and enthusiastically consented to by both parties, but the circumstances in which they find themselves having sex are sketchy. It didn't feel like enough to tag, but I do want to make this warning explicit. 
> 
> \- I rearranged a whole bunch of reality for this fic even though I hate doing that. The World Cup of Hockey just...did not happen, let's pretend it's happening some other year. I forgot about poor Eric Gelinas getting traded to the Avs and could not figure out how to fit him in alongside Boedker. Sorry, Gelly! 
> 
> \- Finally: the title is from [Blind Pilot](https://youtu.be/OxgQDXMN1Fw) and you should also listen to [400 Lux](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97kHVgDZUs) for at least part of this. This was beta'd by Bridget and is dedicated to #avsfam for listening to me complain about it for way too long.

_Summer 2015_  
  
Gabe’s waiting to text Tyson for his birthday until he’s awake; he keeps checking the world clock app on his phone and then feels a little silly for overthinking it. Just as he’s about to send a text for Tyson to wake up to, Tyson surprises him with a text first.

 _24 !_ he sends Gabe, and Gabe blinks and checks Victoria time and yep, it’s 5 am there. He’s still typing but Gabe sends a quick _happy bday man_ with as many celebratory emojis as he can grab in a split second before Tyson yells at him for not saying it. 

Tyson’s next text arrives at the same time Gabe’s is delivered. _My last year of freedom ._ and Gabe groans and covers his face, shaking his head. Of course Tyson is still joking about it. Of course he’s bringing it up unprompted.

 _Stop_ Gabe sends back, and also _Why are you up already, DQ isn’t even open yet there?_ and then a row of ice cream emojis just to forestall any more awkward discussion of what being 24 means for an unbonded omega in the NHL. Ice cream is good, ice cream is safe, Tyson should hopefully shut up.

 _Training_ Tyson says, a complete and utter lie that immediately tells Gabe what the truth is.

_You just got home, didn’t you?_

_Give me a break, its my birthday_

_Go to sleep, Tyson._

_I’m in bed !_

_Are you in your bed?_

__Gabe taps the text out before he can overthink _that_ , but once it’s delivered of course he stares at it, the faintest bit of heat settling in the pit of his belly, blanketed on the tops of his cheeks. He wishes they were in person; he could grin at Tyson, watch him flush. It would be flirty-but-not-really-flirty-because-they’re-teammates-not-bondmates in tone and Gabe could make it work. It’s not going to work over text. 

Next time Tyson wants to contact him from someone else’s bed, he’s going to have to Facetime. 

Over here, hanging around his Stockholm apartment and waiting for Freddie to pick him up for lunch thousands of miles away from Victoria, he’s just kind of embarrassed and mad about being embarrassed and also mad about where Tyson’s sleeping. 

He’s madder still when Tyson just sends back a smirking emoji and nothing else, which is ridiculous. At least it wasn’t a pic of the guy this time. It’s fine.

They have the afternoon off, but Gabe wonders if Freddie will mind hitting the gym with him later to take out some “alpha aggression”, as Freddie will call it. Alpha angst, if you’re asking Bea, though Gabe does not care to.

Whatever, this is all too much thought to put into some birthday texts. He knows it’s the significance of the birthday that has him doing this, because it’s been on his mind for a while, just kind of low-key buzzing around in there—since the end of the season when Tyson brought the same guy around the boys three times and Gabe asked him, “So, new guy’s sticking around for a bit, huh?” and Tyson laughed at him, said, “What’s his name, Gabe?” and then laughed even more when Gabe couldn’t remember, was Tyson sure he told everyone? Sometimes he forgets basic courtesy.

Tyson was like, “Yeah, exactly,” and no, the “new” guy (they’re all new guys and never seem to last long enough to become old guys, and Gabe’s not passing judgement on that but. Yeah. Tyson’s 24 now) did not stick around, so Tyson’s in something of a unique position for an omega, at least unique to Gabe and in hockey.

Mandating that omegas are bonded, or at least contracted to be bonded, by their 25th birthday is only one of the ways in which the NHL is still something of a league for dinosaurs, but it’s probably the most relevant one to Gabe right now. It’s been on his mind all summer, and he doesn’t know what he’s hoping for, because the thought of Tyson just randomly dropping the news that he’s found his one true alpha and he’s ready to lock that shit down never really sounds appealing to him. It just doesn’t sound like Tyson.

But the alternative seems unthinkable, and it’s what he’s worried about now, on a sunny summer day while Tyson is apparently living his life without worry of what 25 might bring if he doesn’t get his shit together. It’s stupid to worry, but Gabe’s a captain and he’s one of the more territorial alphas he knows and that’s apparently a combination that makes these thoughts happen. 

Gabe doesn’t buy into the whole uncontrollable, unruly and baby-crazy omega thing the league still wants to feed them; it’s 2015. He knows 25 is way too young to have the love of your life figured out, is happy the league made it 30 for alphas so he has more time (because lord knows he doesn’t have his shit together yet; he truly isn’t judging here), and still thinks it’s a bullshit double standard that it’s different. But he worries. Because it’s the rules, and Tyson doesn’t really seem too concerned about it yet.

And none of that’s going into casual birthday texts. What goes in is _Just enjoy yourself, Tys_ and more ice cream emojis. 

Tyson doesn’t answer him until hours later, after Gabe has gone to lunch with Freddie, demolished two steaks, snarled out, “Cardio!” and dragged a small group of their friends to the gym to hit a bag and each other for a while, destroyed more meat for dinner, stopped by home to help Bea corral another escaped cat, and then gone to bed.

The answer is there when Gabe wakes up and checks his phone after he turns his alarm off: _Always_ , a winking emoji, and a slightly blurry selfie of Tyson’s happy, bleary-eyed drunk face. He appears to be sitting in someone’s lap; if Gabe concentrates, he thinks he can make out the corner of Brayden Schenn’s smile-crinkled eye and some of his hair, so it’s probably his lap. 

And Gabe sighs and puts his phone down and scrubs his hand over his face. He thinks, knows, he needs to get a grip, because Tyson is going to do whatever he wants, with whoever he wants, whenever he wants, and Gabe isn’t going to judge him or think stupid, old-fashioned things like _at least Brayden’s a beta, at least it’s not Luke_ because that thinking is useless and frustrating. 

It’s barely any of Gabe’s business and if Tyson’s not worried about it, Gabe shouldn’t be either. He’s Tyson’s captain, not his—mother. He’s his friend. Tyson will figure it all out on his own and Gabe’s not going to worry about it anymore. 

 

_Fall-Winter 2015_

__Gabe has three dinner invites on day one back in Denver, before he’s really gotten out of the time difference fog. He’s loopy enough to dwell a bit on the lack of an invite from Factor or Ginner, but of course Buffalo is a long way to go for dinner.

Gabe splashes water on his face at his kitchen sink, flicks some affectionately at Zoey, and then picks the most low-key option: steaks on EJ’s deck, _bring the princess too._

So Gabe and Zoey head over to EJ’s when the light is golden and starting to fade, shining off Zoey’s coat as she pants excitedly out the window. EJ’s dogs greet them in the driveway and Zoey runs off with them as soon as Gabe opens the passenger door, shaking off the very last of her travel malaise and dragging Gabe’s with it as he laughs and watches her be happy.

EJ yells for him to head out back as Gabe lets himself in, stepping around shipping crates and half-unpacked suitcases that haven’t made it upstairs yet. “Nice job unpacking, loser,” Gabe says as he steps out onto the deck, where EJ is grilling, barefoot and wearing an apron with differently patterned horses all over it. 

He gets a toothless, unbothered grin in response, and Gabe laughs, rolling his eyes. “Wow, nothing fancy for my welcome back dinner, huh?” 

“The teeth are for polite company, Gabe. Not bratty captains who think they still get welcome back dinners, come on.”

“Whatever,” Gabe says. He loses his flip-flops too and makes himself comfortable in one of the chairs around the table, grabbing a beer and sticking his feet on the empty chair across from him. It’ll only be the two of them, so they won’t need all the chairs. “You could at least think of Zoey.”

“Zoey would still love me even if I had no teeth,” EJ says, smug and happy. It’s true, but Gabe doesn’t agree out loud on principle, instead drinking his beer and watching the dogs run around in the grass EJ keeps meticulous even when he’s not here. 

They eat their steaks with a salad made from veggies EJ claims he _grew_ at his house in California. Gabe is pretty sure he’s lying but it’s not like he can tell the difference between this stuff and Trader Joe’s, so he leaves it be. The dogs get treats so they don’t bug them for their people food, but in short order they’re lined up on EJ’s side of the table and he’s slipping them bits of steak, smiling wide when Zoey licks the palm of his hand with pure love. Gabe rolls his eyes. 

“You know I hate when you do that.”

“She’s a growing girl, she needs her protein,” EJ says, waving his slobbered-on hand dismissively at Gabe and shoving quinoa in his mouth with the other. “Stand down.”

“This is the only reason she loves you; you bribe her.”

“We all do what we have to do for love, buddy.”

They both crack up. Then they chat idly about their summers, and Gabe finishes his food and relaxes, enjoying the ease of a no-pressure conversation as the light fades out around them and the bug zappers come on. The dogs sprawl out over their feet under the table, the temperature drops, and they make jokes about Tim Hortons runs gone wrong and don’t poke too hard at the idea that Factor’s not here to take the jokes personally.

Gabe works hard to keep that out of his head, but it’s not easy. The trade felt like something of a turning point, the biggest crack at the young core they’ve grown up with and always wanted to win with. 

He doesn’t like to think about any other parts of it changing, wants to keep taking next steps with this group, and knows it’s on him to keep them all on the same page, all working towards the same goal for each other. 

Hockey’s a business, yeah, and it’s not like what happened with Factor wasn’t a long time coming, but still. Gabe looks at EJ, picking grape tomatoes out of what’s left of the salad and popping them in his mouth while he tells Gabe about the foal he spent the summer with back in Cali, and thinks about how he has to keep the rest of them together. He has to.

That’s the main thought Gabe has as training camp starts and more teammates pour into the city, new faces and old faces. Being a good captain means treating everyone the same, young or old, alpha or omega or beta, staying with the team or headed elsewhere: everyone gets his time and his welcome and his friendship, because that’s the kind of captain he knows he has to be.

Being a captain means Gabe has to carry himself carefully when he heads into his yearly check-in with the front office, sitting in a cushioned leather chair on one side of a coffee table across from Patty, Joe, a few of the trainers, and the team bonding specialist. The specialist, an older, nice enough guy named Travis, had started attending these when he turned 20 and reached maturity as an alpha, and Gabe gives him the same polite smile as he does everyone else and then tries not to look at him again at all.

The meeting is fine; it’s something they all do with the team and Gabe’s not exactly worried about most of it going badly. They talk about his game, the goals he wants to set for himself and for the team, how he wants to grow as a player and as a leader over the course of the year. 

Gabe gives practiced but earnest answers. He wants to stay healthy, foster the edge in his game but learn how to keep it in check when he has to (alphas always have to say shit like that; Gabe gets these lines straight from his agent). He wants to lead the team to the playoffs. He wants to ease the burden off their goalie with good defense and scoring. 

They all nod and scribble notes and Gabe feels like they’re ticking boxes off. He keeps himself relaxed but serious, and he’s preparing himself carefully for when they inevitably ask if he has someone he’s thinking of bonding with yet.

This time it’s Patty, which does catch him somewhat off guard. “And the love life?” he says, an amused but friendly smirk on his face like he’s laughing at himself a bit for asking. “Anything there?” He gives Gabe a companionable sort of shrug, which is supposed to make Gabe feel comfortable and at ease. 

But Gabe can’t shake how intent Patty’s eyes are, how everyone is watching him carefully for his answer. This is the part Gabe has to be careful about. This is where he can’t say what he wants to say, which is in part a polite, “That’s not really your business, Coach,” and in larger part a snarled out “Fuck off.”

He’d practiced this answer with his agent, too, and he has to pick those words out over the rush of familiar anger and resentment and Bea in his head, ranting about how backwards and regressive the NHL is about dynamics. It’s nothing he doesn’t agree with, but: he’s a captain. He has to push it out. He has to carefully avoid thinking about his teammates going through these questions too, ignore the flare of heat that runs through his blood at the thought of anyone else, omegas especially, questioned so casually about their private lives.

“When you’re a part of our league, you’re our responsibility,” Travis always tells them at their yearly bonding orientation, reading from literature straight from the central office. “Your safety is our primary concern, and these are the steps we all have to take to ensure the safety of you and your fellow players.”

He leaves out anything about the league image and integrity; that gets trotted out when something bad happens, when an alpha loses his cool or an omega goes into unexpected heat on a road trip. At meetings like this, and larger ones like orientation, the pretense of togetherness and safety concern is still paramount, and so Gabe has to go along with it. It’s just the way things are, no matter how angry Gabe gets.

So slowly and carefully, Gabe says, “I’m not seeing anyone right now.” He keeps his face open but controlled, trained at locking down anger the way all alphas have to be. 

This is the answer Gabe gives the team every year, whether it’s true or not. He had had a girlfriend the first time they asked him, right after he was drafted, and he knew it was coming but it was still jarring and uncomfortable, enough to make him duck his head and mumble out, “It’s nothing serious.” 

He felt like a huge jerk, especially when Sherman clapped him on the back, laughing out, “Atta boy, Landy!” like it was impressive or something. It’s nothing he wasn’t used to, especially in hockey, where alphas are piled up in every front office everywhere and encourage each other to get that aggression out by any means necessary, bonded or not. But it still made Gabe feel like a terrible person, for lying and for using a girl he really liked to lie, and Freddie and Bea had to talk him out of buying a bonding ring for her out of pure guilt.

This answer is safer, even if it’s not the one they want to hear—at least, not from an alpha. Joe and Travis seem satisfied enough, but Patty heaves this huge, frustrated sort of sigh, clicking his tongue. 

“Okay. Any problems like that? Do you feel okay?”

“I feel fine,” Gabe says flatly. He has to remind himself how much he likes Patty’s fire in the room, how much he wants to play for him, in these uncomfortable moments when he feels like his coach has him pinned under a magnifying glass. He’s never felt this way before with another coach, but then he’s never had one as intense as Patty.

Patty frowns at him. He glances around at the other guys, the trainers, as if wanting one of them to jump in and offer Gabe stimulants or something. Travis does ask, sort of gruffly, “Ruts okay, on time and everything?”

“Yep.” Gabe doesn’t offer anything else. Travis nods and scribbles something down on his clipboard and Joe clears his throat a little awkwardly, not meeting Gabe’s eyes. That’s almost disappointing, because Gabe knows that if there’s anyone in this room who could give less of a shit about alphas sowing their seed and releasing all that roiling energy in sex, it’s the best omega who’s ever played the game. 

“All right,” Patty finally says. “You let us know if anything acts up, okay? Or if you need—”

“I got it,” Gabe says, too quickly probably. Patty’s face goes tight and Joe looks up; fucking Travis is writing something down again without looking at him. Gabe takes a small, hopefully imperceptible breath and reins it in. “I mean—I’ll be fine. No need for any of that.”

The team arranging some omega for him to fuck is basically his worst nightmare. The thought makes his stomach sink as he thinks of the conversation the team is poised to have with Tyson, where he’ll be forced into the inverse position but much more permanently—and he’s not worrying about it, really, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t, but. 

“That’s good, Gabe,” Joe says. He stands up, so suddenly that Patty glances up at him with a slight frown, and reaches out to shake Gabe’s hand the way he always does when this is over. “That’s all we need from you today. Thanks for coming in.”

“Of course,” Gabe says. He shakes everyone else’s hand, unable to keep from squeezing Patty’s hand a little too hard—there are some alpha clichés that just can’t be helped, and Gabe knows that about himself—and giving everyone his best and brightest toothpaste ad smile as he books it out of there. 

He checks his phone and gives a relieved groan when he sees a text from Nate: _I’m buying you a beer let’s go !_

 _You can’t buy me a beer it’s illegal_ Gabe sends back, because he can’t help it, but he puts on his jacket and gets in his car and heads to their regular lunch spot, where Nate is stationed with Mitchy and Mikko, who looks vaguely traumatized but happy enough with a burger the size of his head and a microbrew in front of him. 

“Buying alcohol for minors, John,” Gabe says disapprovingly, a little too loud, and Mitchy looks up and flips him off while Nate and Mikko crack up.

“Keep talking and you won’t get any,” Mitchy says. Gabe rolls his eyes.

“I can buy my own, thanks. Don’t start with me, old man.”

He sits down and orders and then looks around to see if anyone else from the team is around; not yet. Nate says, “I think they’re still on the forwards,” and Gabe jumps a little and gives Nate a look. Nate just smiles serenely at him and then crams his burger into his mouth like he’s completely unbothered.

“I know that, I was looking for—Iggy. Whatever. How did yours go?”

Nate shrugs, but Mitchy leans across the table and asks, “How was _Travis_?”

Nate still has too much food in his mouth to answer but Mikko’s eyes go wide and he stares at them. “The bond person goes to yours?”

“After you turn 20, yeah,” Gabe says gently. “This was Nate’s first time with him. It’s not a big deal, though. He’s just there to see if you need some little blue pills.” Mikko still looks vaguely terrified so Gabe is quick to add, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if you do! It’s really okay.”

“Omegas always have the bond specialist there,” Mitchy says. “So they’re used to it by now. Mostly they just want to make sure your dick works and stuff, you know. You’re popping your knot on time and everything. I don’t think any of the hockey guys take them seriously.”

“I mean, they shouldn’t,” Gabe says, scowling at his beer a little. Nate shoots him an amused, fond grin, but that doesn’t really fend off the bitterness brewing and starting to escape. And of course it’s nothing Nate hasn’t heard or agreed with before anyway. “It doesn’t fucking matter for hockey. Our dicks are none of their business.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Mitchy says, laughing. He gives Mikko his most encouraging smile. “But it’s fine, it’s not bad for us at all. Just be happy you’re not an omega, eh?”

“Right,” Mikko says. He laughs, too, and Gabe catches Nate watching him again, knowing and sharp, obviously waiting on the protest already working its way up from the angry depths of his chest, desperate to get out, yes he should watch what he says around Mikko, no he shouldn’t put too many thoughts like this in his head, and of course Mitchy is just trying to make him feel better and not so scared, but—

“Listen, stupid dynamics rules affect all of us, even if we’re not directly targeted by them,” Gabe finally says, and Mitchy groans.

“Oh, here he goes.”

“It’s okay to have a problem with the team asking questions about your sex life, even as an alpha,” Gabe continues carefully, meeting Mikko’s eyes dead on and being very serious. 

“Yeah, Mikko, feel your feelings,” Nate says, and Gabe gives him a quick shove, because he knows he’s kidding and knows he agrees with Gabe fully and is just being a dick in front of Mitchy. He rolls his eyes at Gabe but finally lets his face go softer. “Whatever, yeah man. If you ever need to talk about that stuff, you talk to us. Travis, whatever—he’s not really for you, he’s for the league. It’s us and your agent, remember that.”

“I’ll remember,” Mikko says softly, nodding at Nate and Gabe. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Nate says, giving a shrug. Gabe feels warm with some pride—Nate is such a good kid—and affection for both of them; he knows that good teammates, good support, is what makes all the dynamics crap they have to deal with from the league and the team bearable. He wants to make sure every rookie they have knows that and believes it. He’d made it a point for Nate from day one, and he’s glad it got through. 

“All right, this is getting a little soft for me,” Mitchy says, shaking his head and flagging the waitress down for more beer. “Where the hell is everybody, I’m surrounded by secret betas.”

“Shut the fuck up, Mitchy,” Gabe says, and they’re arguing when a few more of the guys arrive—a few more forwards.

“Think they’re up to the dmen now,” Iggy tells them cheerfully, clapping Gabe on the shoulder and giving him a comforting shake. “Relax, man. There’s not gonna be anything final today. It’s just talking.”

“Right, but he’s an idiot,” Gabe says, clucking his tongue and looking down at his phone worriedly. He’d eaten his burger too fast and doesn’t have that to distract him anymore. “He’s going to say something stupid, he always does.”

“Wonder where he gets that from?” Mitchy asks, and their table cracks up.

Nate casually steers the topic away from Tyson and Gabe is grateful for it, but he’s also mindful of Nate checking his own phone, too. They order a round for each new arrival—Holds first, then EJ, making Holds move so he can sit next to Gabe. “He’s in now,” EJ says lowly, and then he doesn’t bring it up again, leaving Gabe to the worry he can’t help anymore, only taking comfort in the fact that he’s not the only one with it on his mind. 

Indeed, something of a hush falls over the table when Tyson finally arrives, having texted no one to warn or complain or ask for vast quantities of alcohol in advance. Gabe feels the same kind of rush of guilt he always does when Tyson is the only omega in the room and that’s something everyone’s aware of, a feeling no one can help in the air. He’s not the only omega on the team now, but they don’t really know Grigo that well yet, and he’s bonded already anyway; the Russians always take care of that sort of thing as early as possible. 

No one else on the team is an omega at 24, and no one else just spent their front office check-in being told he’ll have to be bonded within a year or be submitted to the league’s arranged bonding program. For all that the dynamics stuff affects all of them, no one is getting as raw a deal as Tyson is right now.

To his credit, Tyson looks shaken but not upset; he has a crinkly sort of smile on, half of one at least, and he drops into a chair behind Nate and reaches around him to start stealing the cold fries off his plate. “What’s up, fellas?” he chirps. “Everyone have fun talking about the birds and the bees with good old Trav?”

“Totally,” Nate says, looking back at Tyson with a careful smile. “I love telling Joe Sakic about my dick. Really sets the tone for the season.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Tyson says, cracking up. With a series of hand gestures and smiles, he has a beer in front of him, and Gabe wants him to have food nearly as fast; Tyson always looks more comfortable eating, and Gabe is only a little ashamed of indulging the alpha part of him that likes to facilitate that. 

Mitchy is, of course, the brave one that rolls his eyes and sharply asks, “So?”

“So what?” Tyson says, wiping beer foam off his lips with the back of his hand. Mitchy rolls his eyes again.

“Are they getting you a mail-order knot or what?” Mitchy asks. A few guys laugh at that, but all of Nate, Gabe and Iggy watch Tyson carefully for his answer. Mitchy doesn’t laugh either, and Gabe knows he really does care; he also knows this is probably the best approach to take with Tyson for this stuff. 

Tyson _is_ one of the guys that laughs, too loud, tilting his head back and opening his mouth wide. He shakes his head. “I think you know I can get a good knot any day of the week, man. We’re not there yet.” 

“Dude,” Mitchy says. “This is kind of serious, you know. Do you have any kind of plan?”

“I’ve got time, all right? I’m gonna figure something out,” Tyson says. He sounds way surer than he looks, eyes darting a little. His phone isn’t on the table and Gabe imagines it’s shoved in his pocket to avoid the likely calls from his agent, who also wants to know what the plan is.

“That sounds like a terrible plan,” Gabe says, unable to bite the words back. “Honestly. You don’t want to get stuck with the program, okay? Think about it.”

He knows he sounds like a tool from the look Nate is shooting him, but he doesn’t really care. These are the words he couldn’t text Tyson when he turned 24, the words he couldn’t say when they saw each other at the first team dinner back in Denver because they still weren’t supposed to be thinking about it then. They’re words he’s had rattling around in his chest for weeks, months, because it’s none of his business but also it _is_ because he cares about Tyson and he needs to make sure he takes this seriously. 

Tyson pulls a face, gulps down more beer, and gives a shaky, angry sort of laugh, pretty unpleasant. “What are you talking about? That program is what little omegas dream of! I can’t wait to pick a bondmate out of a hat and get stuck on his knot until I’m retired. Who doesn’t want that, eh?”

Nate groans and Gabe says, “Dammit, Tyson,” but Tyson’s off and running now, five shots nasty even though he’s only had one beer. 

“Maybe I should just auction the goods off, how about that?” He starts to stand up and Nate grabs him, keeps him halfway down with one knee on his chair. He cups his hands around his mouth and now it’s Gabe’s turn to groan. “Hey everyone, any alphas out here want to put a ring on it? Place your bids, all proceeds go to Kroenke Charities—”

“Stop it!” Nate hisses, and he and Iggy are able to wrestle Tyson down and quiet quickly, never mind that they’ve already drawn looks. Tyson’s cracking up, polishing off his beer and leaning back in his seat. 

“You’re honestly the worst person,” Gabe tells Tyson. “You’re ridiculous. This is _serious_.”

“Yeah Gabe, I think you might be right,” Tyson says, meeting his eyes with his grim smile and sparkling eyes. “It’s serious. They’re gonna marry me off so I don’t go crazy and jump some monster alpha on the ice and beg him for babies. It’s gonna be great.” Gabe’s flushed with anger at the thought, wants to throw something at Tyson for talking about it like that and also throw something at every idiot in the NHL who thinks this is how things should be. Tyson keeps going before Gabe can let any more of the anger out, and then of course it gets worse. “But I can’t fucking fix it right now, okay? I just have to—I have to figure it out soon. That’s all. Is that all right with you?”

Gabe grits his teeth against snarling out _no it’s not_ because not a bit of it is all right. But he knows, and maybe always has, that Tyson’s being honest at this point, that he’s scared shitless but has to just believe he’ll figure it out in time. 

“It’s going to be fine,” Nate says, reaching back to sling his arm around Tyson’s shoulders. “We’re gonna figure something out,” and that’s so Nate, treating this like it’s his to figure out as well. 

That kind of responsibility shouldn’t fall on Nate, who is just a kid. It shouldn’t have to fall on any of them, it shouldn’t be a thing that they ever have to deal with. Nate’s bravery highlights just another lack of fairness, enough to make Gabe angrier. 

But getting angry doesn’t do anything, doesn’t solve any problems or help any of his teammates. It doesn’t keep his team together—Dutchy and Factor can attest to that. There’s the way things should be and there’s the way things are, and Gabe has to find some way to reconcile the two in his head and channel it productively, the way everyone tells alphas they have to. 

And getting angry at Tyson, who is at minimal fault here, is probably the worst move of all. So Gabe sighs, sits up a little straighter, and looks Tyson right in the eye, feeling warm when Tyson raises his chin and meets his eyes the whole time. “Nate’s right. We’re not gonna let you go down that road.” _He’s_ not going to let it happen, no matter what he has to do. 

Tyson rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling at Gabe, a little red in the face. “Oh thank god, the big, bad alphas are on it and they’re gonna protect me—”

“The alphas and your favorite beta,” EJ cuts in, knocking his fist on the table. “The competent one who actually gets shit done.”

“Oh great, I’m saved,” Tyson says; he laughs again but it’s more genuine than anything that came out of his mouth all night. Gabe likes it and doesn’t examine that more than necessary. “Seriously, why don’t you work on playing defense on your skates instead of on your belly sliding across the ice before you get involved in my sex life, okay?”

“Okay, forget it, he’s unmarriable,” EJ says. He looks up at the ceiling. “God help the alpha who gets stuck with you.”

“Amen,” Mitchy says, and then everyone laughs for real. Tyson’s food shows up, the guys get loose enough to follow EJ’s green light to start ripping him, and even Gabe allows himself to give Tyson shit for immediately “treating himself” to dessert before he’s even done with his dinner. It feels good, normal, and Gabe enjoys the familiar look Tyson gives him when he does it: exasperated and affectionate and too bothered, a comfortable exchange by now.

They don’t talk about their front office check-ins or dynamics shit again that night, but Gabe feels comforted in the knowledge that somehow, he’s going to make sure Tyson’s okay. It feels good to give in to that impulse, and Gabe’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with any alpha influences or biology. There’s alpha instinct and there’s doing the right thing, caring about his friend and teammate, and protecting him from the way things are. He’s good with that; that’s all Gabe.

 

 

In the meantime, the season starts, so there’s that to think about. In their best moments, the moments that make everything else worth it, Gabe and his team can just be a bunch of hockey players, playing a game they love in front of cheering crowds, meeting fans who think the world of them. It’s a gift and a responsibility and Gabe would do a lot to hold onto it, even if he thinks the league asks for too much.

At first, it’s easy to trust in them figuring the Tyson situation out eventually when hockey becomes the main focus. The Avs start out as their usual inconsistent selves, unable to string more than two wins together until a month into the season, more often trading wins and losses every other game. It’s stressful and Gabe wants to find a groove that doesn’t seem to want to develop for them.

There’s time, he tells himself, and he tells himself the same thing when it’s the middle of November and Nate has him over for dinner at Factor’s old place and says, “So I’m setting Tyson up with someone and I’m putting a mandate for five dates on it. What do you think?”

Gabe blinks and looks around, but there isn’t anyone else around to laugh at how abrupt or direct Nate is being. For a split second he misses Mikko, who’d been sent to San Antonio a little while back and was always good for laughing with him about how ridiculous all of their teammates are.

“Come on, man,” Nate says when Gabe doesn’t react fast enough, rolling his eyes. He’s leaning over the tall table with stools that Tyson always hates sitting at because they make him feel short. He looks determined. “You said you’d help me figure this out, so—”

“Right, you’re right,” Gabe says quickly, shaking his head. “Totally. I’m on board, okay? Who’s the guy?”

“He works for my credit union. He taught me how to write a check. Shut the hell up, who even uses paper checks anym—oh my god, this is serious Gabe!” 

Gabe stuffs most of the rest of his laughter into his palms, then slaps his hand down on the table when he can’t hold one last bark of it in. “I’m sorry, I just—really? What’s his name?”

“Brendan,” Nate says, his voice with a dark warning to it that Gabe heeds. He keeps quiet, refusing to giggle again. “What does it matter? Do you think five dates is long enough?”

“It’ll be a record for Tyson,” Gabe says, and when Nate just scowls harder at him he puts his hands up and says, “Okay, yeah, I think it’s long enough. It’s a good idea.”

“You don’t seem to have anything better, and he’s refusing to talk about it,” Nate says, which explains why Tyson’s not here. Gabe has the hysterical image of Tyson sitting alone in his car in the driveway, playing a game on his phone and listening to Pearl Jam while Nate and Gabe plan out his love life for him. He almost, but doesn’t, looks out the living room window to confirm Tyson’s not there.

“You’re right,” Gabe says, letting his shoulders droop. It’s not that he isn’t worried—that never really goes away. But it’s easier to focus on hockey than think too much about actively helping Tyson find a perma-alpha; he hadn’t really thought out that part of that plan or how he’d feel about it.

And that definitely makes him a shitty person, that he’d put his stupid and irrational feelings—whatever they’re about—over the pressing need to get Tyson sorted. That’s the kind of immaturity that makes Gabe doubt himself as a friend and captain. On another, kinder night, when Nate isn’t still just glaring at him and exposing him for the fraud he feels like, Gabe would be able to tell himself that he’s still growing, that’s he’s always learning, and it’s all a process. He can try to believe that shit.

But tonight he just feels guilty, and he knows there’s only one way to assuage that guilt, and that’s doing the right thing and backing Nate up. Nate somehow never seems to have a problem with doing the right thing, like it’s effortless and a complete no brainer all the time. Gabe wishes he didn’t have to work so hard to be the same kind of person Nate just inherently is, good and kind, but he’s never going to stop working hard at it, so maybe it evens out in the end.

“Five dates,” Gabe tells Nate, nodding firmly. “I’ll help with whatever you need.” 

“He’s gonna give me a hard time,” Nate says. “You gotta back me up. Also, find a backup guy. I’m gonna tell EJ and Mitchy and—look, between the bunch of us, we’ll find someone for him.”

“We will,” Gabe says, and he is 100% on board with that. He is. Nate still narrows his eyes at him, but Gabe keeps his face earnest and serious and maintains eye contact long enough that Nate buys it and starts eating his cold dinner. 

Nate’s right, as always; Tyson puts up a fight about “ _dating_ , gross, what is this, the 50s?” and Gabe has to go full-on bossy captain and then concerned and earnest friend to guilt him into it. “Nate learned to write checks to set this up for you,” he says, and Nate and Tyson both put their faces in their hands for different reasons. “Show some gratitude and show up, Tys.”

It’s not quite working until Nate finally says, “He’s taking you to Mizuna,” and that finally shuts Tyson up and gets him thinking, at least. Gabe rolls his eyes at Nate because he probably could’ve opened with that, but in the end Tyson agrees to one date, for the food, and that’s what matters.

Nate uses his special best friend powers to apparently solidify agreements for dates two and three. Gabe, meanwhile, tells EJ, Mitchy, Iggy and Comes to make finding a backup a priority and decides their choices will be next in line because he’s having trouble finding anyone he doesn’t think is horrible, or that Tyson wouldn’t think is horrible. 

EJ says, “Just make a list of every single alpha you know, this isn’t hard, he had sex with his mailman last year for god’s sake,” and Gabe starts a note on his phone but only gets as far as _Bea_ before losing it imagining Tyson and his sister together. Tyson would be terrified of her. 

In any case, the credit union guy with the good taste in Denver fine dining seems to be working, so Gabe figures it probably won’t be necessary anyway. He kind of avoids the situation a little, focusing on hockey, telling himself it’s good the guy is working out, Gabe didn’t even have to do anything, and of course Nate solved it all on his own. There’s a reason Nate went first overall apparently.

So he’s surprised when he’s settling into bed one night a little while after a game and gets a text from Tyson, which is typical Tyson: _u up ?_ He only knows how to text in pickup lines 90% of the time, which makes his current predicament all the more ridiculous.

Gabe texts back a winking face and _Yes what are you wearing?_ just to be a jerk, and then he feels bad when the next text he gets is actually nothing of a pickup line: _Wanna pick me up somewhere ?_ even though it literally has the words in it.

That’s a different kind of text, one that has Gabe immediately texting back _Where? Omw._ and getting back out of bed to hunt for the hoodie he’d been wearing all day at the rink before the game. 

Tyson directs him to the end of a block lined with upscale-looking condos, not unlike Gabe’s or Factor’s. Tyson’s sitting on the curb with his legs stretched out in front of him, and he looks up when Gabe’s car comes down the street, eyes bright in the headlights before he squints. 

Gabe gives a short little beep and pulls over gently. He keeps the car running as Tyson gets up and climbs into the passenger seat, then wordlessly hands over the hoodie he’d kept in his lap the whole ride over. Tyson takes it and, without saying anything, sniffs it. Gabe can’t help a short laugh.

“I wore it all day before, I think you’re good.”

“Game day hoodie, nice,” Tyson says approvingly, squirming out of his jacket and then shoving his arms into the hoodie. He pulls it around him but doesn’t zip it, hugging it closed, and then settles into the seat, leaning against the door. He gives Gabe a look, and Gabe just raises an eyebrow at him and keeps the car still until realization dawns and, rolling his eyes, Tyson unfolds out of his pretzel hug to put his seatbelt on. “Drama queen.”

“Safety first,” Gabe says brightly, shifting the car out of park and getting going. Tyson pulls himself back into position with a sigh, tucking his face near his shoulder and closing his eyes for a few moments, and Gabe just lets him, keeping the radio off even when the silence makes him a bit twitchy, concentrating on the low hiss of the tires beneath them and the faint sounds of Denver at night. 

After a few moments of quiet driving, Tyson unfurls a little and shakes his head. “All right,” he sighs, and Gabe stops at a red and looks over at Tyson with a calm, open expression, no judgement whatsoever. 

“You good?”

“I’m good,” Tyson says. He doesn’t take the hoodie off—Gabe wouldn’t want him to, anyway, and maybe that’s not just a biology thing but the kind thing is to pretend it is—but he’s not quite so wound up anymore, and Gabe considers that an alpha job well done for now. 

He tries not to think of why this job wasn’t done already, why Tyson was sitting on a curb instead of safe in bed with the guy who knows how to write checks but not, apparently, what to do after you knot someone before you want to bond with them—he concentrates on driving instead, because safety fucking first.

“Hungry?” and he’s a little concerned when Tyson shakes his head, because at this point middle of the night Denny’s after a pickup like this is an institution, a tradition for them. “You sure you’re okay?” 

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.” He sounds tired, and if he’s being honest Gabe is tired too: it was a game day, after all. That hoodie had gotten tons of mileage at the rink, then they played a hockey game, and maybe it’s not so weird that Tyson just wants to hit the deck. Gabe wants that, too.

Except he really, really doesn’t want to drop Tyson off at his empty apartment, where he’ll go and sleep alone in an empty bed, maybe in Gabe’s hoodie, maybe not. He might leave the hoodie in the car and Gabe will hate that, because no matter how much Tyson says he doesn’t like the smell of pine trees and burning wood chips, Gabe likes the way that smells on Tyson, mixed with his scent, softer and sweeter. 

There’s no alternative, though; he’s not Nate, won’t take Tyson home and insist on bunking together. They're not as close as that. So he takes the long way home, hoping Tyson doesn’t notice. And with Tyson alone in mind, Gabe asks a careful question he told himself he wasn’t going to ask.

“So, uh. It’s going well with the bank guy, then?” He heroically manages to not say “how’s his knot?” even though he totally would with a few more drinks. Gabe is driving. He’s being a good guy tonight. 

“Huh?” Tyson asks, narrowing his eyes at him, and then his face lights up. “Oh! Uh. That wasn’t him.”

A small smudge of pink forms across the bridge of Tyson’s nose, spreading across his cheeks, and Gabe tries not to grin. Tyson is all about his own sexuality and being his own person and refusing to apologize for liking sex with alphas, but in moments like these he gets a little embarrassed and Gabe knows he shouldn’t like it as much as he does. He tries to encourage Tyson as much as possible and help him feel comfortable with himself, because god knows he’s not going to get that kind of encouragement from many other sources in hockey, but still. He likes that he gets to see this. He’s one of the only ones.

And that explains why Tyson hadn’t called Nate, his usual alpha-in-waiting whenever he needs a pickup. Nate, Gabe has been reliably informed, smells like grass stains and warm dog “in a good way” and his snapbacks aren’t twice the size of Tyson’s head and apparently do the scenting job well enough. He’s fairly certain they do some cuddling, too, which is the ideal way of handling these types of hormone crashes. 

“Nate’s gonna be mad,” Gabe says, not quite thinking too much about why. He doesn’t want to. He wants to be viciously, unfairly happy about the guy Nate picked not working out, here in the dark quiet of the night when it’s just him, Tyson, and Gabe’s scent seeping into Tyson’s skin. 

In the morning he’ll think about urgency again, that maybe there’s time but not that much of it. Maybe he’ll go to Denny’s with Nate and try to work out a new plan, a new alpha, a different angle to fix Tyson’s impending problem. But for now—

“It’s just stupid,” Tyson says, shaking his head against the headrest. He closes his eyes again. “I don’t want to be set up. I don’t want to _bond_. It’s not fair.”

“It’s really not,” Gabe says gravely, guiltily. 

“Bonding is supposed to be permanent, right? It’s supposed to mean something. But what the fuck does it mean if they’re making me?” 

“They don’t care about that. They just think—”

“I know what they think. It’s stupid as shit. I don’t know if I even want kids _ever_ , never mind any time soon. I think I have some kind of control over it, you know?”

“I know. It’s just stupid, backwards thinking, Tyson. No one else believes in this stuff anymore.” 

“Right.” Tyson sniffs in disgust; his eyes fly open, dancing the way they do when he’s about to be viciously self-deprecating or self-pitying. “If I had any other job in the world, any other dad in the world, none of this would be an issue.”

Gabe cringes. “I mean—”

“Should’ve played baseball,” Tyson mumbles, ignoring Gabe to look out the window again, curled up and pouting. “Basketball, maybe.”

“You are way too short for basketball,” Gabe says on instinct, and Tyson finally cracks out a laugh, smiling over at him. 

“Whatever. The point is—”

“The point is you play hockey, and you like hockey, right?” Gabe says firmly, looking straight ahead at the road. They’re close to Tyson’s place, but it feels important to get this out now. “So it is what it is. This is the situation and we have to deal with it one way or another.”

Tyson’s quiet for a bit, but he doesn’t seem annoyed; he looks over at Gabe and out the window in turn, and he doesn’t speak again until Gabe is rolling up onto Tyson’s block, stopping the car in front of his building. When he puts the car in park, Tyson heaves a big sigh and snaps his seatbelt off. “All right. Thanks, man.”

“Anytime,” Gabe says, meaning it. 

“Hey, can you not tell—”

“I won’t tell Nate.” Gabe takes a moment to enjoy the genuinely grateful smile Tyson gives him, soft and small, before adding, “You know he’s going to figure it out though, right? Like when you don’t bond with whatshisname?” 

“I know, but whatever,” Tyson says, shrugging. “It is what it is, right? Let him think it’s working so he doesn’t worry. I don’t want—” He frowns now, looking down at his lap. “I don’t want this thing to be a distraction.”

Gabe can’t help his wince, because that sounds way too much like Travis talk: omegas go into heat and smell good and drive all the alphas crazy, and when they reach 25 all they want to do is get knotted and pregnant so all of this is for everyone’s own good. They don’t need the _distraction_ of an unbonded omega in the prime of his fertile years, as if that’s all Tyson is, as if that’s even a major part of who he is. 

Gabe doesn’t like being reduced to ruts and bursts of anger and territorial posturing; he doesn’t like all the ingrained training he’s had to keep himself under control, like he’s some kind of animal. It’s all nonsense, and someday the league is going to have to get past it. It just won’t be in time to help Tyson, and that sucks.

“You’re not a distraction,” Gabe says in his firmest, most earnest voice. “I mean it. You’re our teammate and we’re going to make sure you’re okay.” 

Tyson huffs, but he smiles again and nods, eyes still downcast until he’s actually getting out of the car. “All right. If you say so. Later, Gabe.” 

He takes the hoodie, and Gabe watches Tyson head inside and enjoys that, too. Just for a moment.

 

 

 _Winter-Spring 2016_

The season moves, still up and down, constantly reaching for playoffs and feeling good about it for a game or two and then feeling terrible about it in the next stretch. Gabe knows there’s a ton of frustration in the room, a lot of vets who feel the team should be better than it is. He knows Patty feels the same way, can see it in the set of his jaw and his lack of patience with virtually everyone. There’s tension for almost every team meeting, a kind of urgency Gabe knows he’s supposed to feed on. 

There’s a different kind of tension in thinking about Tyson, as he gets away with faking it with the credit union guy for a while before Nate catches him and he has to move on to EJ’s pick: a nice enough guy who manages some—some horse thing or another, Gabe’s not totally sure. He doesn’t take it seriously because he knows that Tyson isn’t.

It gets worse when Dutchy catches wind of what they’re doing and gets all excited, insultingly excited, one night when they’re all out to dinner together and EJ is demanding to know how it’s going. “Oh, this is great,” Dutchy says, giving Tyson a real, very white smile. “I’m so glad you’re taking care of this.”

Tyson has enough fondness for Dutchy to laugh it off, and he’s good at managing him like that, never taking him very seriously even though their worldviews and lifestyles could not clash any worse than they do. Nate and EJ aren’t as good at that, and they both stiffen. Before Gabe can run interference, which is what he usually does at dinners like this, Dutchy continues, as he usually does.

“So if it doesn’t work out with Theo, I can totally set you up with someone from my church, that would be awesome.”

“Why wouldn’t it work out with Theo?” EJ asks stiffly. Dutchy puts his hands up in appeasement, but EJ barrels on. “Why do you think someone from your church is better than Theo?”

“All right,” Gabe says warningly. Across the table, sitting between EJ and Nate, Tyson has his hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh openly, and Gabe kicks at his foot as best he can because he’s not in the fucking mood for this tonight. 

“I’m just asking, what if Tyson and Theo are made for each other? Why would we even need you?”

“I’ve wanted to set Tyson up forever,” Dutchy says blithely, mostly unfazed by EJ’s tone. Like Tyson, he tends to ignore any awkwardness or tension with his teammates, blustering and smiling through it all in the name of some imagined camaraderie and teamwork. It can sometimes lead to him saying things like—“I think this could be really good for him, get him on the right track.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Nate says, under his breath but very audible. Tyson’s full on laughing now, no longer hiding it, and Gabe puts his head in his hands. 

“‘The right track,’” EJ repeats starkly. “And what track is that, Dutch?”

“Why don’t we not do this?” Gabe says. “Listen, why don’t we talk about—”

“The track that leads to bonding,” Dutchy answers, completely unbothered. “To happiness.”

“You know I’m right here,” Tyson says, voice shaky with laughter. “Like, sitting right here, on whatever the fuck track, pretty happy—”

“You could be so much happier,” Dutchy tells him. Wordlessly, Nate gets up and takes his entire place setting down the table, settling it at the edge near Iggy before coming back for his chair. Gabe doesn’t blame him; he really doesn’t want to hear Dutchy evangelize right now, and from the looks of it neither does EJ, but EJ will tell him so. Rudely. 

“I think we should just see how it goes with—Theo,” Gabe says loudly and firmly. “Just to get the league off your back. Maybe EJ’s right—” Tyson snorts obnoxiously and EJ gives him a shove. “Or maybe it’s not the right move and we’ll find someone else. But it’s fine, we all know the situation.”

“I think it’s a blessing,” Dutchy adds, because he can’t fucking help himself. 

“You think so, huh?” Tyson says, leaning back in his seat. “You want to switch places?”

“No way,” Dutchy says, snorting. “I would never—”

“All _right_ ,” Gabe says sharply, forceful enough that both Tyson and Dutchy stop and look at him. “I think that’s enough. How’s your steak, Tys?”

“Still mooing, so it’s great,” Tyson says, smiling a small, amused smile over at Gabe. “How’s yours?”

“It’s fabulous.”

“This is riveting, really,” EJ says, and now he’s getting up with his own place setting like this is a thing that’s acceptable to do. Of course Nate’s started a trend. “I’m gonna go sit with Nate.”

“You got it, man,” Tyson says, patting EJ’s back as he leaves and then sharing another smile with Gabe, rolling his eyes. Gabe rolls his eyes back as EJ loudly drags his chair across the floor to the other half of the table, but they’ve avoided a beta vs. beta fight in the middle of dinner and he’s going to call that a win any day of the week.

“My steak is good too,” Dutchy says out of nowhere, and Gabe and Tyson crack up.

As the trade deadline approaches, everything feels like it’s in limbo: their season, still with the playoffs in sight, and Tyson’s relationship status, as he goes from credit union guy to horse guy to a brief affair with his mailman again, to—“My agent is contacting a ‘service’,” Tyson tells them one night in early February, snickering too much. “He keeps saying ‘Don’t worry, it’s handled.’ Whatever.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gabe says, and suddenly he finds himself actually looking for alphas, desperate to find one he trusts, someone he could imagine Tyson spending the rest of his life with, or at least the rest of his career. He still can’t picture that. He still doesn’t want to.

But it’s his job as captain to put those kinds of feelings aside and try his hand at fixing this, because the ‘service’ sounds no better than the league program. He mentions it to Tyson, dropping something casual about the hot guy who works at the shelter where he adopted Zoey; they’ve kept in touch and he’s kind and tall and if Gabe were back home he wouldn’t hesitate to pick him up himself, alpha or not. Here that kind of thing doesn’t fly, at least not in their line of work, but still. He thinks it’s a good pick.

“Yeah, no,” Tyson says. “I’m done with that.” 

“Done with what?” Gabe asks, and Tyson rolls his eyes.

“I’m not doing the setup thing anymore. I tried Brendan, I tried Theo, all my mail is coming to me rolled up in balls now, I tried the _service_ —”

“So what does that mean?” Gabe stares at Tyson incredulously. “You’re just giving up?” 

“No,” Tyson says. “I’ve got a plan. A backup plan. Just relax.”

“Relax,” Gabe repeats.

“Trust me.”

“Absolutely not,” Gabe says, but in the end he doesn’t have a choice, because Tyson stops talking about it again. 

As is customary for their relationship, Gabe really only gets firsthand knowledge of Tyson’s drama in the aftermath, when Tyson’s plan—apparently to recruit someone from back home when they’re in Vancouver for a game, a guy who had supposedly sworn to be Tyson’s backup if it ever came to that—falls apart. Tyson and the guy have a drunken argument at Nate’s house when Tyson finds out the guy is engaged to a beta but felt bad about breaking his promise to Tyson so he just _faked it_ for two weeks until the beta contacted Tyson and all hell broke loose. 

Nate texts him _911_ and then calls Gabe from his own bathroom and explains everything, and says, “I need to get at least one of them out of my house, they already broke Factor’s chalkboard wall throwing shit at each other, help.” 

So Gabe drives over and EJ meets him there which is almost insulting; Gabe just hopes Nate called him first at the very least. “What?” EJ says when he sees the look Gabe’s giving him. “He wanted an adult.”

“I’m the _captain_ ,” Gabe says hotly, and then he steps into the condo and has to duck a retro corded telephone being hurled across the hallway.

Between the two of them, and Nate when he finally comes out of the bathroom, they manage to get Tyson and the guy (who Gabe has apparently met several times but whose name escapes him immediately) in separate rooms, and then a hotel room and a cab ride for the guy who should probably leave before he or Tyson break any more hipster shit Dayna made Factor leave behind. 

That means the three of them are left with a drunken, self-pitying Tyson, who tells them all that love is fake and promises are nothing and he never wants to bond with anyone because he doesn’t think it would ever be worth it. “Not even if my jerk kids were wizards,” Tyson tells them nonsensically. Then he passes out with his head in Nate’s lap, and EJ sighs and leaves, and Gabe stays because what if the engaged guy comes back? He checks that the door is locked and the alarm is set and Nate catches him, half-asleep, eased out from under Tyson’s head.

“You are every stereotype,” Nate says, yawning. He gives Gabe a hug, a quick thank you, and then shoves him towards the guest room. 

Gabe lies in bed listening to Nate move around the condo he’s too young to call home, listening to Tyson snoring on the couch, and thinks Tyson has to be wrong about bonding. Bonding is family, and family is like this, everything that they do for each other, so it has to be worth it. Gabe’s never considered himself a romantic but maybe he is, about that. About his team.

 

 

The trade deadline finally comes and goes, and Gabe hadn’t really let himself think too much about the possibility of Tyson getting traded to just remove the unbonded omega problem altogether. But once the deadline passes and Tyson’s still in Denver, the relief Gabe feels makes him a little lightheaded.

The relief is also short-lived, because the night they take Boedker out for welcome to the team drinks, Tyson can’t go because he’s pulled into a meeting with his agent and the front office. Gabe knows he’s not getting traded—the deadline passed, and they’re still expected to make the playoffs, acquiring Boedker has made that clear; acquiring another omega showed them how much they’re willing to set aside for that goal, old stereotypes be damned—but it’s still hard to concentrate on anything but that. 

Tyson joins them when they’re only a round or two in, red-faced and a little manic. He takes the double whiskey Iggy’s nursing and knocks it back like a shot, coughs all over the new guy, then blinks and says, “Hey, sorry.”

“No worries,” Boedker says, smiling hesitantly up at him. 

Tyson pats his shoulder and then collapses dramatically into a chair next to Nate, squished between him and Iggy, sighing heavily. “So that’s it, then,” Tyson says flatly. “I have until my birthday to pick someone. They’ll be giving me applications to look through sometime in the next month or two.”

“Man,” Iggy says sadly while Gabe tries to rearrange himself into some kind of control. His heart is pounding loudly in his ears. “It’s been years since I’ve seen someone go through that. I can’t believe they’re really going through with it.”

“Well, you know,” Tyson says. He’s kind of flailing his hands around, and if Gabe looks closely enough, his fingers are trembling; someone pushes a beer into his hand and then they look a bit steadier. “I can’t be a distraction, that’s what Patty said. And, y’know, we gotta make the playoffs, so the sooner I pick my rent-a-knot, the better for the team. Or something.”

“Fuck,” Gabe breathes out, closing his eyes. “Tyson, no. Jesus. None of this has anything to do with the team—”

“Yeah I know, Gabe,” Tyson snaps. He looks immediately apologetic and Gabe gives him a fast, understanding frown, shaking his head. Tyson nods back and looks down at his beer. “I know. But that’s how they feel. So this is it now, I don’t have a choice.”

“You have some choice,” Iggy says gently, and Tyson rolls his eyes.

“Oh yeah, I get to pick which piece of alpha meat they’ve got applying to bag a rich omega, so at least there’s that—”

“It’s not all like that. I mean, some of them are former players, and they have to pay a lot to apply. They vet these guys, it’s not like you’re gonna get some psycho.” The entire table is staring at Iggy, who puts his hands up placatingly. “Okay, I know, and this _sucks_ , I’m not saying it doesn’t. There’s a reason no one does it—”

“Because they bond with teammates instead,” Boedker cuts in, and now it’s everyone’s turn to stare at him. Gabe can feel the hair standing up on the back of his neck, and Tyson looks like he’s been punched. 

Iggy nods. “Well, yeah. That too.”

“Wait, no, hold on,” Nate says, pointing at Boedker. “What are you talking about?” 

Boedker looks nonplussed. “Everyone does it. Man, so many alphas on here, you don’t know? So, you set it up with the team. Instead of the program, you bond with your buddy, an alpha on the team, if he’s the same age or if he has time. Then you have until he’s 30 to find someone you really like, but the team is happy because you have a bond.”

“Teams are okay with that?” Gabe asks, looking at Iggy when Boedker just nods. “Like, the league?”

“Officially? Maybe not. Unofficially? It’s one of the things most teams will look the other way on,” Iggy tells him. “Listen, I didn’t know too many omegas back in the day, but I know of at least three who tried this.”

“I got lucky,” Boedker says. “I met my alpha, it worked out, we got bonded. But that all happened very fast, and before that—I had a plan with my teammate. Actually, my team told us we should plan it, just in case. Tipp said he arranged it before, it works okay.” He shrugs, looking at Tyson. “So, if you don’t want a stranger—”

“No,” Tyson says shortly, making everyone kind of jump with his tone. He never, ever sounds that serious, but right now his face is clouded and pinched. “No way.”

“Dude, what?” Nate asks, eyes wide. “What the fuck? We’re doing this, this is perf—”

“There is no way in hell I’m dragging you into this like that, no way,” Tyson says. 

“What?” Nate looks genuinely shocked, and Gabe can’t blame him. It feels like the most obvious solution they’ve come up with in a while, so obvious he’s a little ashamed no one brought it up on their own. Additionally, he’s a little annoyed Iggy hadn’t brought it up sooner, that it took a brand new omega on the team to bring it up instead of an alternate captain, an alpha. Iggy looks at him with a slight frown, and Gabe thinks they’ll probably have to talk about it at some point, but not just yet. Now—

“You’re 20, Nate, you’re not ready to bond yet, and not with me, Jesus,” Tyson says. “I told you I was done with the setups, and that includes _you_ , come on. We’re not doing this.”

“But—”

“He has a point, Nate,” Gabe says, and Tyson nods firmly. “If anyone’s going to do it, it should be—”

“No!” Tyson basically yelps. His face has gone redder, and he looks at Gabe with wide, harried eyes. “We’re not doing this. Can we talk about something else?”

“Uh, what else is there to talk about, exactly?” Nate says. “I don’t get what your problem is, man. This is what we need to—”

“ _We_ are not doing anything,” Tyson says, and then to everyone’s shock he stands up. “This is my problem, my thing. I’m not bonding with any of you, it’s not happening.”

“Why?” Gabe asks plainly, looking Tyson straight in the eye. For a small, almost surprising second, Tyson meets his gaze dead on and doesn’t look away, still red but eyes blazing, determined. 

“Because I’m never going to bond for real, okay?” Tyson tells them, and that’s the point where he looks away, somehow going redder. “So you’d be stuck with me until I retire, and that’s—I’m not doing that. I don’t want—we’re not going down that road, no matter who says anything about it to you. Okay?”

Gabe’s mind is racing, and he can’t help blurting out, “Wait a second, did the front office ask you about this?”

“Sakic, kind of—he asked if there was anyone I thought I could ask, out of you guys,” Tyson says, shaking his head. He’s still standing up, which is upsetting, and Gabe should get him to calm down and sit and think about this rationally. But he also feels like he needs to keep arguing, because suddenly this feels like the only thing he can do that makes sense. “I told him no, of course not. And hey, Patty agreed with me, he doesn’t want anyone else in this mess either. So it’s a total no-go.” 

“It’s not up to Patty, if we make a decision,” Gabe says. Tyson glares at him.

“Again, this isn’t a we decision, okay? It’s my decision. And my decision is no, so drop it, okay?”

“But—”

“Forget this,” Tyson says, throwing his hands up and actually turning to leave. He walks out faster than Gabe has ever seen him move without food in front of him, and while Gabe goes to get up to follow, Nate beats him to it. 

“I’ll talk to him. Maybe—” He breaks off, looking between Gabe and Tyson’s retreating figure uncertainly. 

Iggy pats Gabe on the back and nods at Nate. “Go, Nate. Stand down, captain. You can’t attack him over this, you’re not gonna get anywhere like that.” While Nate hurries off, Iggy keeps his hand on Gabe’s back, solid and heavy. He looks at Gabe with his warm, comforting eyes, his mouth turned down in a frown. “Look, I didn’t bring this up because it’s not—I didn’t think it would be the right move. Not with how Tyson—”

“You should’ve said something,” Gabe says, trying not to growl it out. He doesn’t want to hear another vet he respects make a snide remark about Tyson’s promiscuity. He doesn’t want to fight with _Iggy_ , of all people, about how Tyson should be allowed to have sex with whoever he wants, however many times he wants, as long as he stays safe and is happy with himself. 

He’s coming to terms with the fact that there’s a generation gap in the NHL it feels like he’s always going to be contending with, that maybe he’s brushed up against it more than others being a captain to older guys. But it’s never easy to be confronted with it when it’s someone he really looks up to. 

“It can get messy,” Iggy says carefully, sensing the growing storm in Gabe’s tone. “I’ve seen it end badly, even if it starts out casual and convenient. It never stays like that with teammates. And it locks people in, right? You’re here, fine, but who knows what Tyson wants to do this summer, you know what his agent is like—”

“He wants to be here, what the fuck?” Gabe can’t help the snap in his voice, sitting up straighter. The entire table feels tense and he only spares a regretful thought for the new guy, in the same situation Tyson has been in so many times before: the only omega in a room full of snarling alphas. He feels bad for Boedker, but no longer for Iggy, who is back to trying to pick his words carefully. 

“I’m just saying, this isn’t something that should be decided out of desperation. It’s more complicated than it seems. I think it’s telling that Joe suggested it but Patty was against it; he understands.”

“Patty understands— _Patty_ has never _had_ to be bonded to someone before he could rent a car in this country,” Gabe spits out. “Joe’s an omega, he suggested it to help Tyson, not corner him. Come on, Iggy.” 

“You know I’m not trying to make things worse for him,” Iggy says softly, every bit of his voice dripping with sincerity and earnestness. And rationally, Gabe knows; it’s the generation gap again.

But it’s just more of the same garbage that has them in this situation: the same thoughts and unfairness that means Tyson is looking at a horrible setup. Gabe wonders how many people on their team right now think this is Tyson’s fault for not just settling down and bonding like a good omega should. He wonders if there’s anything he’s ever going to be able to do as a captain to get this stuff out of their room. 

They’ve had so few omegas on the team since Gabe has been here. For so long, Tyson was the only one. Still, teammates bonding was something he should’ve thought of, known about. He should’ve talked to more people—how many friends does he have around the league that aren’t alphas or betas?

“So the team set it up for you,” Gabe says to Boedker, turning away from Iggy and reaching across for Tyson’s abandoned beer. He signals the waitress and stops himself from just ordering another beer. “Uh, what do you want?” 

Boedker gives him a weird look and then asks what’s on tap. “Right,” he says once his beer is on the way. “Tipp called us in, explained everything.”

Gabe listens and starts to plan.

When Nate tells him that talking was a no-go, Gabe just starts to plan around Tyson. He feels guilty about it, certainly, but they don’t have time to fight about this for too long, not with everything else going on right now. The playoffs push, the freaking _media_ finally picking up on the fact that something omegas do everything they can to avoid is in motion for the first time in years and writing pieces about it, their teammates carefully ignoring the topic entirely but for a core handful—it’s a lot, all at once, and Gabe doesn’t have time to argue with Tyson about what feels like their only way out.

So Gabe sets up a small meeting with Patty and Joe. He doesn’t tell his agent about it, or the NHLPA—maybe that’s the wrong move, and it worries him a lot, but Boedker told him that agents and the PA look the other way and try to be involved in this as little as possible. It’s a détente with the team, something secret and nominally forbidden. 

“I don’t know any players who go to the team about it,” Boedker says, giving Gabe a bemused look when he tells him his plan. “Of course an alpha would.”

“I’m the captain,” Gabe says, shaking his head. “It’s my responsibility, why wouldn’t I go? It’s nothing to do with being an alpha.” 

“I had a pretty good captain and it’s not something he’d ever get involved in, I think.”

“Then you didn’t have a pretty good captain.” Gabe shuts his mouth after that because the less said on that subject, the better. 

The meeting is—short. Gabe makes it casual, hanging back after a practice in Coach’s office with Gabe on one side of the desk, sitting with arms folded around himself. Joe stays standing, a hand on the back of Patty’s desk chair, and looks curious as Gabe takes a breath.

“You wanted to talk?”

“I wanted to talk about Tyson,” Gabe says. He doesn’t miss Patty sitting up a little straighter in his chair, eyes piercing and alert. 

“Is there something wrong?” Patty asks. He glances towards the door. “Should we get—”

“No,” Gabe says quickly, also looking towards the door. “No need for Travis, this isn’t—it’s nothing like that.”

“Are you sure?” Patty leans forward in his seat, elbows on the desk. Gabe glances up at Joe, a bit pleading, but his face is completely impassive, just studying him and waiting. “It’s okay if—it’s natural, you know? Spring is coming and you know he takes his pills, but sometimes at that age the hormones are a lot, so if you feel like—too much, and it’s temptation, Travis can help—”

“Jesus, no,” Gabe cuts in before Patty can keep going any further, breaking out of frozen embarrassment that’s somehow also warmed his face up. “I don’t want—”

“It happens to alphas, and it’s not your fault. I completely understand,” Patty says, like he didn’t even hear Gabe, and Gabe finally finds his anger swimming in the depths of his mortification.

“No, okay? I don’t want to fuck him.” He says it so flatly and firmly but it feels like an abject lie as soon as it leaves his mouth, a terrible voice in his head sing-songing _yes you do_ like the ghost of a jackass little kid who died down a well. 

Gabe tells that voice to fuck off, and then groans and puts his face in his hands for a moment while his coach and GM stare at him. “I mean. Not like _that_. I don’t need help controlling myself.”

Patty puts his hands up. “I didn’t mean—I know how Tyson is, I know it’s the risk with omegas, I’m not putting this on you—”

“Why don’t you explain what you want to talk about, Gabe?” Joe says suddenly, carefully, as Gabe sits very still trying not to yell things.

He takes a breath, then tries to remember the words he’d practiced with no one. He doesn’t have lines from his agent for this, is in completely uncharted territory according to Boedker, and has to talk to a coach that apparently thinks Gabe’s a risk to snap and mount the only unbonded omega on his team at any moment. It’s kind of—Gabe has to remember why he even fucking likes hockey in that moment, and calm down.

“I wanted to talk about Tyson’s…situation, and the plan for it,” Gabe says slowly. “I’d heard that maybe—sometimes on other teams, omegas pick an alpha teammate and make a plan with their coach or their GM, and they bond so the omega doesn’t have to go through the program. Is that something you guys know about?”

He knows they do, and in the first instance in which Joe meets his eyes, he knows Joe sees through his playing dumb right away. The corners of his mouth curl into a small smile, but Patty is doing anything but smiling, his eyes suddenly like steel.

“We know about that,” Patty says, clipped, accent sharpened into a blade. Joe nods.

Gabe nods back. “Okay. So I was just wondering—just wanted to know if that’s on the table for Tyson.”

“No,” Patty tells him, and Gabe’s glad he was prepared for that because it’s downright chilly.

“All right. Why not?”

“Because it’s not what we—”

“Tyson didn’t seem to want to put it on the table,” Joe says, clearing his throat over the gathering storm in the chair next to him. “We did bring it up with him, if he had anyone in mind. Obviously, we know he’s close to Nate, but being so young—”

“Of course,” Gabe says, and then, working hard to keep absolutely every feeling he’s ever had out of his voice, he adds, “But he’s not just close to Nate. And I’m not bonded yet either.”

“Are you suggesting that we arrange something?” Joe asks, and when Gabe nods, Patty smacks his hands down against the desk and makes him jump.

“No. Absolutely not.” 

“Why?” Gabe asks as plainly as he’d asked Tyson, leveling Patty with the same hard stare and refusing to back down when it’s returned as a glare. 

“Because you are a young, capable alpha with your whole future in front of you,” Patty spits out. “And you aren’t going to tie yourself to some—”

“He’s my teammate,” Gabe says through gritted teeth. “My friend. You’d rather sell him off to some stranger—”

“It’s the rules, our rules. And if he has such a problem with them, he should’ve thought of that and found someone already,” Patty says. “He’s had plenty of time. How many times did we talk to him about this? It’s years now, telling him to stop messing around, start acting like he’s supposed to. We need to protect our players and we can’t mess everything up for one omega who doesn’t think the rules apply to him. No.”

“Tyson’s your player too. He’s someone you need to protect, too.” There’s a rushing in Gabe’s ears as the words slip out, as Patty starts to go red with anger. 

“You think we haven’t tried? I told you we talked to him, his agent, his _father_ —what can we do? He wants to play hockey, he follows the rules. That’s it.” Patty’s fingers curl into fists, and he levels Gabe with his flattest, firmest look. “And you too. You follow the rules too. We don’t do this with teammates bonding. So no. It’s not on the table.”

“But—”

“I already told you, if his scent is too much, you go to Travis—”

“It’s not his scent! I’m not—it’s not about that! I’m his captain, I have a responsibility to—”

“You’re his captain in hockey,” Patty says, icy. “That’s it. It ends there. Remember that, we let you be captain for hockey.” Everything in Gabe bristles at _let you be captain_ and he very nearly stands up—he actually braces his hands against the arms of his chair to do it. 

But Joe is fast to break in, his words placating if a little unsatisfying. The good cop to Patty’s bad cop, but Gabe is still unspeakably angry at both. “I think, most importantly, is that this isn’t what Tyson wants. He doesn’t want to be bonded with a teammate right now.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Gabe says, glaring at Patty. Joe gives him a warning look now, paternal enough that Gabe immediately feels like an insolent brat, which is completely unfair. 

“Whatever the reason, an arrangement can only be made if Tyson’s on board, and I don’t think he’ll change his mind on this,” Joe continues. “So, while I appreciate you coming in about this, I don’t think we can really talk about it any further. It’s Tyson’s decision.”

“What decision?” Gabe asks. “Get bonded to a stranger the league gives him or get bonded to a teammate or get bonded to some random person he picks up in a panic? Either way he’s being forced. You don’t see anything wrong with that?” 

Patty snorts, shaking his head in his seat and throwing his hands up in disgust, but Gabe ignores him, looking at Joe and no one else. Joe looks back, mouth pulled into a frown now, eyes downcast; it should be satisfying when he’s the one to look away, clearing his throat and shaking his head, too.

“It’s the rules, Gabe. Coach is right. You want to play hockey, you follow the rules. Everyone in this room has had to. Someday, you’ll have to make these kinds of choices too.”

“And we hope that you make better ones than your friend,” Patty says, unable to get his last shot in as always. Gabe does stand up then, shaking a little, but before he can say anything Joe is coming around the desk to shake his hand and pat him on the back.

“You’re a good teammate and a good person,” Joe says. “You have a lot of character and you know how we value that here. So I appreciate you coming to us with this. You know you can come to us anytime.” 

He’s being led out, then, and it’s kind of sickening. It’ll still be sickening when he has to play a game for Patty, has to listen to him yell about being a team and playing for each other, all for one goal that seems to be slipping further and further away by the day. Nothing feels fixed or settled after that meeting, and Gabe still feels like he needs to do _something_ , the words _we let you be captain_ still stinging at his chest every day. 

It’s almost a relief when a few nights later, Gabe gets a pickup text from Tyson. It’s an off day but he’ll be suspended anyway for acting like a selfish idiot at the worst possible time, so he’s bracing himself to have more time on his hands, drafting apology texts to pass on through Beauch. 

Gabe’s thinking, too, about the next steps, what more he can do to make sure Tyson doesn’t have to go through the program. He’d barely stopped himself from asking Iggy if current players are allowed to submit applications in addition to former players and decided to do the research himself, something of an idea forming. He’s ready to call his agent and a rep from the PA. He needs to be productive with his well-deserved time on the shelf. 

He’s surprised when he gets the text because it’s early, and the address Tyson sends him seems familiar, but it feels so good to have something productive to do, Gabe doesn’t question it. He strips off the sweatshirt he’s been wearing all day and leaves it in the passenger seat for Tyson, then pulls up in front of a familiar bar and groans. He really, really hopes Tyson didn’t let someone knot him in a bar.

Tyson’s chatting with the guy working the door at the bar, and he gives the guy a wave goodbye as Gabe appears and gets into his car. He pulls the sweatshirt on immediately, not saying anything to Gabe until it’s on and he has his seatbelt fastened and he’s settled into the seat, and even then it’s Gabe who has to get him talking. 

“So, really? A bar?” 

“What? I’m enjoying my freedom,” Tyson says, looking out the window. He’s not making himself quite as small as he usually does, and he doesn’t really smell like another alpha at this point. He smells like Tyson, like sugary vanilla and wind on sea water, like if you tasted him he’d coat your tongue. Gabe finds himself breathing it in more than he usually allows himself, then flushes to think of Patty’s misguided and patronizing “help”. He rolls down his window. 

“Okay,” Gabe says slowly, because he’s pretty sure Tyson didn’t have sex at all; he’s pretty sure Tyson just ditched a few of his teammates and made Gabe come pick him up. “So. Denny’s?” 

“Sure,” Tyson says, shoving his hands in the front pockets of the sweatshirt, his nose tucked into the shoulder. “Let’s do it.”

They’re pretty quiet until they’re set up in a booth at Denny’s with copious amounts of pancakes and bacon in front of them. They’re two of maybe five customers in the entire place, too early for the college kids to come in after the clubs but way too late for families or old folks; Gabe likes the easy peace of it. 

Tyson dips his bacon in maple syrup like always, sneers at the fruit Gabe likes on his pancakes, and munches for a little while until he clears his throat and says, “So I know Joe and Patty talked to you.”

Gabe freezes for a second, feeling totally caught out, and then takes as casual and cool a sip of ill-advised coffee that he can. “Yeah,” Gabe says, and then he tries, “We talk all the time, it’s part of the—”

“Oh zip it, you clown,” Tyson says, rolling his eyes. “I know they talked to you about me. Look, whatever Sakic thinks, whatever he wants you to do—”

“Tys—”

“—you can’t do it, okay?” Tyson finishes firmly, narrowing his eyes at Gabe. “And don’t let him talk Nate or Mitchy or fucking— _Bods_ or anyone into doing it, all right? It’s on you to keep them out of this, captain.”

“Why don’t you want to just let us help you?” Gabe asks, unable to hold it back. Tyson frowns and looks down at his food, poking at his pancakes and tearing them up a bit. 

“I already told you, I’m never—”

“Okay, no, besides that,” Gabe says, not really wanting to get into the thought of never bonding again. He can’t blame Tyson for thinking that way, even if it makes his chest hurt a little, too. “That’s totally workable. Give me a better reason.”

“Because right now they’re only forcing _me_ into this shit,” Tyson says, looking up with blazing eyes for a brief moment. “I know this kind of thing happens to omegas, I knew what I was signing up for with hockey, but I’m not—I’m not gonna be the reason one of my teammates can’t choose who they want to be with. So I’m serious, no matter what they say—”

“All right,” Gabe says, realizing that’s the kind of stubbornness he’s not going to be able to work around. It’s still slightly heartbreaking; it makes Gabe want to hug Tyson hard, want to scent him until he feels safe and warm and doesn’t have to think about these things anymore. “You don’t have to worry, though. I think it’s a total no-go with Patty.”

Tyson snorts. “Of course it is. Can’t have me spoiling his alpha stock.”

“Jesus. We’re not cattle, man.”

“I know, but does the league?” Tyson shakes his head and then grabs up a large forkful of pancake, filling his mouth. Gabe watches him chew with his cheeks puffed out, a shimmer of syrup at the corner of his lips. His heart feels oddly full, and he has to busy himself with his own food to dull the feeling a little, concentrating on too-sweet strawberry topping so he doesn’t examine that too closely. “Whatever. As long as they’re just pimping one of us out, if it has to be me so be it. It’s not going to be so bad.” 

Gabe grits his teeth. “What part of it’s going to be good?” He’s careful with what he says, as always, even around Tyson; he doesn’t want to let on that while making an arrangement with the team seems to be out, exploring other channels isn’t totally out of the question yet. It’s clear it’ll be best if Tyson is only let in on that later. They can take turns being self-sacrificing; that’s more attractive as an alpha feature anyway, or so he’s been told. 

Tyson shrugs, chewing again. He answers with a full mouth. “I mean, I wouldn’t go so far as good, but I’m gonna figure it out.”

“You’ve been saying that since September, I’m really starting to doubt you have any ability to figure anything out.”

“Hey! Don’t be patronizing, Gabe. Pretty unattractive.” Gabe can’t help it; he sticks his tongue out at Tyson and Tyson snorts into his orange juice, coughing out laughter. “Oh my god.”

“Don’t call me unattractive, come on. There’s no need to just straight up lie here, not at Denny’s.”

“You’re such a child,” Tyson says, still laughing at him. Gabe cracks a smile back, and if he makes it extra intense, well, he won’t deny it’s payback for the unattractive comment. “Seriously, it’s not—it’s not the end of the world, okay? I’ll talk to the guy, whoever it is. Once I get past the—y’know, the bonding part, and the cuddling part or whatever you’re supposed to do, things are supposed to go back to normal, so. I can handle that. I’ll make sure there’s an arrangement and he understands.”

Tyson sounds ridiculously self-assured in a way that Gabe has come to realize is totally fake. The kind thing is to leave it alone, let Tyson keep up his delusions and just carefully go about helping him the way he thinks he can now— _we could have an arrangement, we could be normal_ —but he can’t help poking, as ever.

“But what if he doesn’t understand? How does that even work, do you get to interview these guys before you pick?” Tyson’s face goes tight as he shakes his head, but Gabe already knew that. He’s gentler when he adds, “What if it’s someone who’s—what if it’s an old-fashioned kind of guy? What then?”

Tyson hunches his shoulders, ducking his head in a way that makes Gabe want to rewind every bit of what they’ve been talking about and just go back to laughing. “I can break a bond if I have to,” Tyson says, mouth twisted into a frown. “If it gets—bad. It’ll be messy but the PA can help me with that much, at least. It’s not—I’m not too worried about that.”

He clearly is, and Gabe hates that. He glances up and catches their waitress’s eye, twitching his head, and waits for her to amble over. “This fucking sucks, Tys.”

“Yeah I know it does, thanks,” Tyson says. He rolls his eyes and pokes at his pancakes again, dragging his fork over the tops where it’s soggy with melted whipped cream and maple syrup. “But whatever. It’s gonna be fine, right? I made the NHL, I’m not about to let some joke alpha try and put me in my place or whatever.” 

“Right,” Gabe says, and the waitress is there, looking at Gabe questioningly. “You want anything else?” he asks Tyson, and when Tyson shakes his head, Gabe considers himself, considers the conversation at hand, and then decides this doesn’t count. “Yeah, can we just get like a whole bowl of whipped cream? Like a lot of whipped cream. Is that okay?”

Tyson’s mouth is turning up in a smile now as the waitress blinks and then says, “Sure…” slowly, before heading back to grab it. She returns and puts the bowl in front of Gabe, but it’s Tyson that drags it across the table towards him and says, “Thanks!” cheerfully. 

He starts constructing little sandwiches out of whipped cream and pancakes, licking at his fingertips when they get sticky, and Gabe sits back with the coffee that’s going to keep him up too late thinking about his friend across the table, and smiles because he’s smiling for real. 

And maybe it is unattractive to be patronizing, but it’s hard to reconcile what he wants to do for Tyson with that definition of patronizing. He just wants to help. He needs to help. 

 

 

_Spring 2016_

__The day after the Avs are officially eliminated from playoff contention, Gabe submits his application for the alpha pool Tyson will be allowed to pick from. He sends with it a sizable check for the application fee, plus the relevant sections of the CBA which clearly state he’s allowed to do this along with a letter of support from the NHLPA, wrestled out of his player rep’s reluctant hands.

He’s got more material ready to back himself up—they _have_ to show Tyson his application or they’ll be in violation of the CBA. If they trade him (which feels like a distinct possibility with every passing moment, especially with the number of core players Patty keeps throwing under the bus to the media growing every day) and Tyson still picks him, they won’t be able to stand in the way of the bonding process no matter where he is, and they won’t be able to force them to break the bond even if they’re on separate teams.

Gabe hopes they don’t trade him, but even if it happens, he thinks he’s got a good shot of fixing this for Tyson anyway. He’s prepared to make his case for that, to argue that he’s doing this for his team—for _all_ of his team, the guys who get slammed for celebrating their first 30 goal season and the guys who think Tyson’s a slut getting what he deserves, even if those guys overlap somewhat. 

They made a big deal about the rules last time, so Gabe’s going to do everything he possibly can to follow the rules. He’s got this.

He goes through getaway day mechanically, talking to the press about his disappointment and his own failings and how much he wants to work with this team going forward and getting them back where they need to be. “I know there’s stuff I’ve got to work on, with my temper and my impulsiveness,” Gabe tells them, and he means that part with all of his heart. There are alphas that don’t get suspended; he won’t use his biology as an excuse anymore, even if everyone else wants to. 

He gets called in for his yearend meeting and brings his agent, which is probably too much but, well. Rules. He’s not getting caught out here. 

Patty’s face is already red when Gabe heads in, and it turns basically purple when he sees Gabe’s agent. There’s way more of the front office in the room this time, Travis but also more members of Hockey Ops, and Gabe searches the room for Josh Kroenke and feels a little relief when he doesn’t see him. But he still feels like he’s in massive trouble and he has to glance quickly at his agent for some reassurance. He gets in a small, subtle nod and sits down across from the line of suits.

“What,” Patty says as soon as Gabe is sitting down; he stands up and throws a stapled stack of papers down on the coffee table. “The fuck is this?”

“It’s my application for the alpha pool,” Gabe says calmly. “I’m going to be one of the anonymous alphas Tyson considers for bonding.”

“This is all by the book, gentlemen,” Peter chimes in next to him, sitting with his legs crossed and a hand on his knee. “That’s a legitimate, certified application that passed PA vetting, as the attached letter indicates. My client’s done nothing out of bounds.”

“‘Nothing out of bounds’—are you fucking kidding me?” Patty says, voice rising on each syllable. “Is this a joke?”

“Gabe,” Joe says, as quiet as Patty’s gotten loud. “We just want to make sure that you’re sure about this. Once this goes through, it can’t be taken back. You’ll be a real option for Barrie to pick from.”

“I’m sure,” Gabe says, and Patty starts pacing around the room. 

“Unbelievable. This is unbelievable, you can’t seriously think we’ll let this—”

“There’s no _letting_ this, Patrick,” Peter says, his voice hard and flat. “Gabe is well within his rights to go forward with this.”

“We’re aware of that,” Joe says, and there’s a rumbling of agreement from the rest of the room save Patty, still pacing. “You’ve clearly done your homework. We just want to have some certainty on the situation, before we start discussing options.” He looks at Gabe now. “Obviously, we can’t and won’t do anything to block your application with regards to your teammate. That’s out of our hands. But as to your future with the team—”

“I want to stay,” Gabe blurts out, ignoring Peter leaning towards him in his seat. “I want—I meant it, you know? I want to be part of the solution going forward, and I want to help my teammates, to lead them. This isn’t—I’m not trying to cause problems for you guys, or with you guys. I just want to help my team and Tyson’s part of my team.” 

Joe studies him carefully, for a rather long time. Long enough that Peter clears his throat and says, “If that’s not part of your plans, then that’s something you and I will have to discuss at some point.”

“We don’t have to discuss anything with you,” Patty spits, shaking his head. “You’re really going to let him do this? This is how you advise your client? What a joke.”

“We want to keep this relationship open and healthy,” Peter says, continuing as if Patty hadn’t spoken. “This is not an act of war. Gabe has a good heart and he wants to help his friend, it’s nothing more than that.” 

“Of course,” Joe says eventually, still looking at Gabe. “Well, look. We have a lot to talk about, obviously. You know we take stock at the end of the year and look at our options. I want to say that I appreciate hearing how you feel about this, and of course I’m glad that you want to stay.” 

It’s not a promise of anything, or even particularly reassuring, but it’s better than what Gabe had imagined, really. He lets out a breath he hadn’t quite realized he was holding and stands up when Joe does to shake his hand, stepping back as Peter shakes everyone’s hands.

Except Patty, of course, who only says, “So does he know?”

Gabe swallows hard and meets his eyes. “It’s supposed to be anonymous, Coach. So no, he doesn’t know.”

“And he won’t,” Peter says, ice in his voice and his eyes. “If he finds out about Gabe’s application, I’ll have the league and the PA on your ass so fast—”

“I think we all understand the gravity of the situation, Peter,” Joe cuts in, stepping between them. “We know the rules. And as I said, it’s out of our hands. The league will handle all of this with Tyson. The next time we get involved will be at his arbitration hearing, when the bond is tested and proven. We are messengers at this stage, and I can assure you that the application will be passed along to Tyson with the others.” 

He looks at Patty, who has his arms crossed over his chest, muttering French swearwords. With a grim smile, he says, “Thanks for coming in, Gabe. Peter. You’ll hear from the league if you’re picked, or from us about anything else.”

“Thank you,” Gabe says quietly. He leaves and makes it basically halfway down the hall before the adrenaline starts to fade and he feels shaky; Peter throws his arm around his shoulders and gives him a small shake. 

“You did well,” Peter says in Swedish, soft and a little jarring. Gabe snorts and pointedly ignores the effort it takes to answer in kind.

“Yeah, this was round two, basically. I don’t think it’s over yet.”

“Well you never face them alone again. No more secret meetings. If they trade you, suspend you, threaten you—it goes through me from now on.”

Gabe laughs again, bitter. “Thanks, that’s really comforting.”

Peter frowns, clearly biting back something. Probably the fact that Gabe put himself in this situation, it’s a huge, insanely risky gamble with the potential to blow up in his face, and that no agent in their right mind would ever advise their client to do something like this, but. He keeps that to himself and Gabe’s glad. 

“Come on. Let me buy you a drink.” 

That’s the best idea Peter’s ever had, and Gabe’s Swedish finally feels right on his tongue when he tells him so.

After that, it’s pretty much a waiting game: waiting to find out he’s been traded, waiting to get a call about Worlds, waiting to just head home when he realizes the call isn’t coming. 

Nobody knows about Gabe submitting the application except the front office, his agent, and the PA, all sworn to secrecy, but Gabe has to wonder how secret it is when Sweden leaves him home. His agent tells him it’s a coincidence, it’s nothing to worry about, but it sits in the pit of his stomach while he tries to wrap things up in Colorado. 

It’s a slightly sickening secret to keep from his friends, when he’s seeing Picks and Dutchy off to play for Canada, keeping Nate company when he’s still laid up with his knee injury, hanging out with EJ while he “packs” for California. 

Gabe finds himself back on EJ’s deck thinking about how hockey really is just repeating the same routines over and over, the same scenarios playing out again and again, and how that never really bothers him. He thinks about how everything can be different in a second, how things will almost assuredly be different this time next season; will he even be around to eat potato salad off EJ’s Dollar Store plates? 

“Will you stop that?” EJ grumbles with a full mouth, and Gabe narrows his eyes at him.

“Stop what?”

“Thinking so loud? You’re giving me a headache.”

Maybe—hopefully?—it won’t be just him on EJ’s deck next season. Maybe it’ll be Gabe and Tyson, a bonded unit. That seems like the only way the path he’s put himself on can turn out correctly, and yet it’s still such a scary prospect. What will it be like to be bonded to Tyson? He hasn’t even let himself think about it too much, so certain it’s simply the way things will have to be because the alternative seems unthinkable. 

“You want to get bonded someday, right?” Gabe asks, and EJ shrugs. “I mean, you don’t have to, but you still want to. Right?”

“Sure,” EJ says. “If I meet the right person and it feels like a good idea.”

“You ever feel like you have to?”

“What, like Dutchy’s crazy doomsday drive to populate the earth stuff? Hell no.”

“Not that,” Gabe says, rolling his eyes. “I mean, like, you’re supposed to fall in love and start a family and be—settled. Everyone’s supposed to want that.”

“I guess,” EJ says slowly. He chews thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t want to be alone forever, but I never thought of it that way. I don’t really like to think about whether I’m supposed to want something, it’s just if I do or not.”

Gabe furrows his brow. “Now you’re giving _me_ a headache.”

EJ laughs at him. “Don’t hurt yourself there, come on. And listen, try answering your own questions. Forget hockey, forget the bonded by 30 rule—do you want to bond someday and have a family and stuff?”

He thinks that’s what he’s been trying to figure out for a while, why he started this whole conversation. He thinks the answer is simply _yes_ , but he wants to know why; if it’s just because he’s always been told that’s what he needs to do, or if it’s because it’s truly what he wants. It’s a little disconcerting that he can’t quite figure that out. 

To add to it, there’s a possibility of it all being a moot point. Tyson doesn’t want to be bonded for real; it seems he doesn’t want a family ever. If Tyson picks Gabe, everything’s pretty much decided for him. All of that is off the table because he’ll never be someone that pushes Tyson to do something he doesn’t want. 

Gabe’s trying to figure out if that’s a loss. He tells EJ, “I think so,” and keeps thinking on it and, as the conversation flows elsewhere and he returns his attention to his potato salad, he decides it probably doesn’t matter either way. Helping Tyson is the right thing to do and it will be worth it, he’s sure. 

It doesn’t quite _feel_ worth it, though, when Gabe heads out for one last round of drinks with the guys before they all scatter more completely, Nate off to Cole Harbour and EJ off to do horse stuff and Tyson off to do his usual summer routine of festivals and sex and west coast things.

Gabe’s looking at a long flight home so he has no plans to drink much, and then thinks he’s going to have to revise that line of thought when Tyson clears his throat and says, “So I’ve got a going away present for you guys,” and pulls out a stack of manila folders from Nate’s backpack. 

He points them at Boedker, who had just solemnly told them he probably wasn’t returning. “This is a goodbye present for you. Something to remember me by, your favorite omega.”

“You’re a terrible omega,” Boedker tells him, laughing openly, and then he rolls his eyes at the looks Gabe and Nate are giving him. “Oh shut up. I can say that to him, I’m an omega too.’ 

“Be quiet,” Tyson says, and he fans the folders out on the table in front of him and Gabe’s stomach sinks into his shoes. It’s a lot of folders, more than he was expecting; when he’d looked into it, he’d heard the last few pools had been relatively small, five or six alphas tops, but there looks to be close to 20 here. He takes a nervous gulp of beer as Tyson continues. “So, here we go, time for my very own version of The Bachelor, starring me as me.”

“Give me a break,” EJ says, laughing and shaking his head. “This isn’t a game, Tyson, come on.” 

“It is if I say it is,” Tyson tells him, and then he hovers his fingertips over the folders, sweeping them back and forth without touching any. He closes his eyes and then blindly drops his palm on one, hitting the table with a loud slap. “Okay, the spirts say this one. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

“For god’s sake,” Nate says, but he’s laughing with EJ, and he cranes to look over Tyson’s shoulder. “What, no pics?”

“It’s anonymous, Nathan,” Tyson says hotly. “It’s supposed to be about _personality_ and _virility_ and _utility_. So let’s check this sperm count, eh?”

“There’s something wrong with you,” Gabe tells Tyson, staring at the back of the folder and the stamped serial number across the front of it. He’d been assigned one when his application was approved by the PA, but he hadn’t memorized it. He hadn’t thought he’d see his goddamn application ever again, and he doesn’t really want to relive the embarrassing contents.

But of course Tyson’s reading aloud from the file, first going through the stats: “12 inches, all right buddy, this is like a roster height, right? Everyone lies, if this guy’s packing 12 inches then I’m really 5’10”—” and then the answers to the painfully invasive personality questions. “‘ _What do you value in a partner?_ ’ Okay gross, ‘support’, whatever—‘bravery’? What is this, are we joining a war I don’t know about?”

“‘ _What do you do for fun?_ ’” Nate reads out, snickering. “Oh man, he likes ‘hitting the gym and getting my sweat on’; weren’t you just saying you want someone that can bench-press you, Tys?”

Gabe chokes on his beer laughing while EJ looks up at the ceiling and Tyson turns bright red. He shoves Nate roughly and then laughs with the rest of the table once he sees he’s the only one not joining in. “Stop reading my files, Nate! This is very serious!”

“Sure,” Nate says, rolling his eyes. He flips through another folder and scowls when Tyson slaps his hand away. “Ow! Stop hitting me!” 

“I think we’re going to put this one in the maybe pile,” Tyson says loftily, closing the folder delicately and placing it on some arbitrary spot on the table, temptingly close to Gabe’s elbow. “Okay spirits, who should we look at next?”

He goes through more of the files in mostly the same way, snickering at both the overly earnest responses to the personality questions and the admittedly dumb ones. “Favorite movies, here we go: ‘Air Bud, Air Bud 2: World Pup, Air Bud 3: Seventh Inning Fetch’—”

“You’re making this up,” Gabe says, snatching the file away and looking at it while Tyson and Nate collapse on each other in laughter. “No fucking way.” The applicant had, indeed, listed all the Air Bud movies in chronological order, and Gabe stares at it in disbelief. 

“I think we have a contender, boys,” Tyson says, trying to take the file back as he shakes with laughter. Gabe hangs on and scowls at Tyson. “What! He’s got impeccable taste, come on. Give it back.”

“No,” Gabe says, and with a pointed flourish, he whips the folder to the floor. Everyone loses it laughing, even Tyson, who also goes, “Hey! That’s my soulmate!” indignantly as he nearly falls out of his chair trying and failing to grab the folder back up again. 

The maybe pile grows with all the files Tyson mocks, until Gabe realizes that none of them are being rejected or accepted outright; of course this is all for show, and of course that’s the only way Tyson really wants to deal with this. He tries not to dread or get excited for Tyson reading out his app. He thinks he’s got a shot, and maybe he cheated a little and tried to fill out his application with stuff he knows Tyson would like and want in a partner, but whatever. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if he doesn’t get picked. He might just leave the planet if Tyson picks the Air Bud guy over him. 

At one point, Tyson’s reading over a file and crunching on nachos EJ ordered for them when he laughs. “Okay,” he says, looking over the top of the folder at them. “Which one of you put in a prank application?”

Gabe chokes again, this time inhaling a piece of corn chip too fast and coughing wildly into his fist as a result. He is not even close to laughing but rather close to panicking. Everyone stares at him for too long until EJ kindly slides over an ignored glass of water, and then Gabe gets himself under some semblance of control by gulping it down and hiding as much of his face as he can with the back of his hand. 

“Are you done?” Tyson asks snottily, and Gabe just nods. He thinks he is sweating. “Good. So this guy apparently has a special talent for sorting people into Hogwarts houses. He calls himself a ‘human Sorting Hat’. Which one of you is this?”

“Let me see,” EJ says, and Tyson hands over the application wordlessly, helping himself to more nachos. Gabe drinks more water instead of watching Tyson fold strings of cheese into his mouth like that’s at all a thing you should watch your teammate do ever; it’s not like it’s attractive, and yet. “Okay, no way, the spelling’s way too good for any of these meatheads.” 

“Hey!” Gabe and Nate say at the same time while Boedker grins into his drink, and then Gabe wants to smack himself in the face. He reaches for the water again and realizes it’s empty, so he helps himself to Nate’s beer, ignoring his dirty look. 

Tyson’s laughing at least, taking the folder back from EJ and looking over it thoughtfully. “This is fascinating,” Tyson says, eyes darting over the entirety of the file and then flipping through it longer than he had any of the others. “Like I’m seriously curious if he can do that.”

“Tyson, come on,” Nate says, shaking his head. “He’s obviously crazy.”

“Crazy or crazy like a fox?” Tyson asks, raising his eyebrows. He’s still looking at the file, and it takes everything in Gabe not to snatch it out of Tyson’s hands and hurl it to the floor on top of Air Bud Guy. What the fuck even is a Sorting Hat, never mind a human one? He might be twitching towards it because EJ gives him a weird sort of look, so he takes a breath and tries to get himself under control. It’s fine. 

“How did any of these idiots get past PA vetting?” EJ asks, and Gabe goes, “Right?!” a little too emphatically, maybe. He might need more water.

Finally, Tyson moves on, and one file later Gabe is up, and Gabe kind of wants the floor to swallow him whole. 

“ _‘What does romance mean to you?’_ ” Tyson reads out, lips curving up into a smile. “Aww. ‘Just sitting on the couch, sharing some ice cream and watching movies.’ Air Bud movies, I assume, but that’s sweet.”

“ _Air Bud movies_ ,” Gabe repeats, shaking his head. “You’re an idiot.” His face feels hot as Tyson keeps going.

“‘ _What do you value in a partner?’_ Okay, ‘independence’, nice; ‘a person who speaks their mind’, totally. ‘Someone who appreciates food and fun and adventure’ all right, bud! I like the sound of this guy.” 

There’s so, so much more in there: stuff about Gabe’s love of animals, of sleeping in, of breakfast and karaoke. About how he wants a partner in a bond, an equal, and how he’ll be willing to respect any boundaries or limits Tyson wants to set. Maybe it’s too much, and certainly nothing he wants read out loud, but he can see Tyson reading it, and _that’s_ too much. 

Tyson lingers on his file, at least. Maybe not as long as Sorting Hat Guy, but it’s somewhat gratifying that the only other thing Tyson reads out loud from his is, “Oh man, ‘ _dick size:_ decent.’ Jesus Christ,” and that sends everyone laughing again, Gabe trying to keep the embarrassment out of his. His file goes on the maybe pile with everyone else’s and Tyson moves on to other guys but Gabe starts to tune it out a little, staring at his own file even as others are dropped on top of it and the starter pile thins out. 

“All right,” Tyson says when he’s gone through all of them. “I’ve got a lot to think about, I think. Some real winners here. This is great.”

“You gotta shred some of those, Tyson,” Nate says, shaking his head. 

“Everyone’s a candidate.”

“Come on, there’s guys in there that want you to kneel and shit. Get out of here with that, it’s not funny.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Tyson says, straightening out all the folders until they’re in a neat stack. He puts them back in Nate’s backpack and zips it up, then rolls his eyes at the serious look Nate’s still giving him. “Oh relax. I’m not picking a monster, give it up. You don’t have to worry.”

“Don’t fucking pick the Harry Potter guy because of Harry Potter,” Nate adds, clearly refusing to follow Tyson’s instructions. 

“It’s important to have common interests—”

“Seriously,” EJ cuts in, his voice suddenly even and steady in a way that makes everyone listen to him. “This is a huge thing to decide on. If you need help picking, talk to any of us. Okay?”

Tyson ducks his head. “Yeah, okay.” 

“Keep us posted,” Gabe says, valiantly managing not to add _pick the guy who wants to share ice cream with you and hold your hand and wants you to be your own person forever_. It’s a close thing. He deserves more nachos for it, he thinks, but of course Tyson finished them all. 

He thinks the _sharing_ ice cream part might be the part that puts Tyson off, and then has to rush not to relive the mini-crisis he’d had filling out the application when he’d really wanted to put _feed you ice cream_ and felt like an ass about it. He still feels like an ass about it, but he’ll have plenty of time to torture himself with that while he’s back in Sweden, waiting to hear who Tyson picked. 

“Of course,” Tyson says, smiling. It’s a little weak, but it gets stronger when he adds, “I’ll put a pic of his dick in the group text as soon as he shows it to me, don’t worry.” 

“The PG-Dutchy version or the real version?” EJ asks instead of groaning or saying “Goddamnit,” like Nate, Boedker and Gabe. 

Tyson’s smile goes sweet. “What, you don’t think Dutchy wants to share in my blessing?”

“Stop it,” Gabe forces out while Nate and EJ laugh, shaking his head at the ceiling. “You’re terrible.” 

Tyson’s smile stays where it is, and if Gabe maybe takes a little too long to look away from it, it’s fine. He’s sure Tyson believes that he doesn’t approve. Probably. 

They say real goodbyes that night, each of them hugging Boedker a little too hard for how little they really still know him. “Don’t forget us,” Tyson says, sounding a bit more baleful than he probably means to, and Gabe kind of kicks himself for not considering what losing a fellow omega really means to him. Even Boedker looks a little regretful, frowning at Tyson. 

“Never.” He grins. “Can’t wait to run you through the boards next season.”

“You? Finish a check? That’ll be the day,” Tyson says, but he laughs and gives Boedker one last hug before he leaves. Then it’s the three of them, and Tyson sighs and says, “Well boys, enjoy your last few minutes of single Tyson. I’ll be married off next time you see me.”

“You’re going to the derby with me in like a month,” EJ says, rolling his eyes. “Stop being so dramatic.”

“I’ll be in Toronto for a bit in July,” Gabe says, very carefully keeping his voice even. “I’m gonna do some training there. So, if you’re around—you know.”

“We FaceTime every day,” Nate adds, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m gonna be sick of single Tyson by the end of the summer.” He hugs Tyson the longest, though, so long that Gabe only gets a companionable back pat in for a goodbye and leaves with EJ.

“You think he’s gonna be okay?” EJ asks as they wait for their car to pull up, half a block out. 

Gabe thinks about it. He thinks about pancakes at home in the middle of the night instead of Denny’s, about sharing ice cream on the couch and, god, if Tyson insists, watching Air Bud. He thinks of continuing their friendship, which is a pretty good one, just with the added, hopefully nonintrusive element of being bonded as well. He thinks things don’t really have to change; they can just be a bit more, maybe. 

“I hope so,” Gabe says.

 

 __  
Summer 2016  
  
Gabe goes home and tries to get back into his regular routine. He doesn’t quite know what to tell his family about what he’d done—it was easier to keep close to his chest when he was an ocean and most of a continent away from them, but it’s harder here, when he’s constantly thinking about whether or not he’s going to get picked, and if he is, the consequences he’ll have to face.

He takes some time, as he usually does, to relax for a while, taking beach days and sleeping in and filling his evenings with long family dinners where he tries to talk about as little personal stuff as possible but also talk to his family a lot because he loves them. Gabe thinks his dad knows something’s up, but he’s respectful and patient enough to let Gabe come to him about it when he’s ready. 

His mom isn’t quite so patient, and she wrangles him into helping her make dinner one night and corners him over a cutting board while he’s chopping onions and tearing up all over the place.

“This is what you get for not listening to what I tell you,” his mom says, taking the knife from him and briskly finishing up the chopping without breaking a sweat. Gabe thinks it’s a little unfair—his mom spent half his life giving him tons of culinary instruction and he only really became receptive to it once he became an adult and realized knowing how to cook sets him apart from helpless babies in the kitchen like Nate and Tyson. Not enough of it stuck, he knows. 

He’s resenting that a little while he blindly gropes for a dishtowel and tries to stop up his eyes with it before his nose starts running too and it’s a whole mess, and that’s when his mom attacks: “So, you have something you want to talk about?” 

Gabe swears into the dishtowel, then apologizes quickly when his mom swats his hip with a spatula. “No,” he says weakly, but when he finally stops hiding behind the towel, she’s leveled him with a full-on, eyebrows-raised, no-bullshit look, and not for the first time in his life Gabe feels like one of her students. 

“I mean, okay. Maybe.”

“Maybe,” his mom repeats, turning back to the stovetop now because she knows she’s got him. Gabe closes his eyes anyway, still wincing from the sting, listening to the familiar sounds and feel of her cooking—the hiss of onions, the gloopy stirring of her familiar gravy, the smell of lingonberries lingering across every surface—and sighs.

“I’m thinking of bonding with someone. Maybe. But it’s complicated and I don’t want to say anything for sure because it might not happen. Okay?”

He watches his mom’s shoulders go a little stiff, likely with surprise, and he doesn’t blame her; he really hadn’t given any indication before this that bonding was anywhere close to being in the picture yet. And he knows that sounds like a frankly crazy and unsatisfying explanation, but he thinks it’s the most he can offer right now.

His mom seems to get that, at least, because when she turns her face has softened, and it goes softer when Gabe reluctantly but necessarily adds, “I’m trying to help someone, Mamma.” 

“Of course,” his mom sighs, reaching up to cup his cheek. “Of course you are. Okay. So, maybe?”

“Exactly,” Gabe says, smiling at her until she smiles back. “Maybe.”

It’s enough to hold her off, and thankfully she seems to understand that it’s a delicate situation that calls for some discretion. Gabe appreciates that about her, and if he hugs her extra hard whenever he sees her as the summer rolls on into late and later June, no one can hold it against him. That’s his mom.

Still, it’s only a matter of time before he has to come clean to Bea. It happens when she stays up late with him to watch the draft, when she claps and cheers as the Avs draft another omega tenth overall, the highest drafted omega the team had ever taken and the highest drafted omega since the Nordiques took Sakic himself. 

Tyson Jost had been the rumored pick for most of the day and Gabe had prepared somewhat, pulling his number out of the grapevine, but he’s still a little shocked as he taps out a welcome text for him. He thinks he’s not the only one; the analysts covering the draft are shocked as well despite the reports, and two of them are talking about Sakic taking a “gamble” even with “the ongoing Tyson Barrie problem” on his hands. 

Gabe grits his teeth and doesn’t say anything but Bea’s cheers turn to boos. “Disgusting pigs,” she says as they keep talking about it. She’s not any more impressed when they call Jost an “omega Jonathan Toews”, spitting out “What does it matter! Say something else!” and then truly getting mad when they get Jost in for an interview and the first thing they ask him is how it feels to be drafted so high as an omega. 

“No one’s taken one of you in the top ten since 2008, did you know that?” and Bea throws her hands up in outrage. 

“Is that really what they said, ‘one of you’? What is wrong with your people, Gabbe?” 

“They’re not my people,” Gabe says darkly, but she’s off and running now. 

“What they’re doing to your teammate is terrible, you know. It’s barbaric. I don’t know how you just let it happen.”

“What am I supposed to do? It’s the rules, I can’t stop them.”

“Of course you can. You guys are the players, the ones people pay to see. There’s no league without you. They can’t control your lives when you control their business.” 

“It doesn’t work that way, I can’t—look, I’ve done everything I can.” Gabe’s trying really hard not to get mad or frustrated, or blurt out the whole stupid thing, but it’s tough. He’s mad at the analysts, he’s mad at anyone who’s made Jost answer for the omega shit so many times that he doesn’t even stumble when they bring it up, smoothly talking about how he doesn’t really think about that kind of thing. 

“I think my skill speaks for itself,” Jost says, a small and confident smile on his face, his head tipped thoughtfully to the side. “I think my biology has nothing to do with it and I don’t think it’s held me back or decided anything for me, you know? I’m here because I’ve worked hard and I’ll keep working hard.” 

“Wow, a lot of confidence there,” the analyst says; the other one laughs. Gabe’s fists clench in his lap and Bea throws a cushion at the TV. 

“Okay watch it, you don’t have to break the TV.”

“And what have you done?” Bea asks. There’s something accusatory about it but only very slightly. He thinks she’s genuinely asking because this is something they talk about all the time: how they’re working to improve as people, and to help the world around them. It’s a part of their relationship he knows is really important and he takes it seriously, enough that he finds himself just giving in and spilling. 

Bea is quiet while Gabe explains; at one point, as he finishes, her eyes close and she sits perfectly still, her breathing so even and quiet it’s barely perceptible. Gabe waits her out, pretty sure she’s not actually just straight up meditating in front of him (not that it would be the first time she’s dismissed him that way, but still) and kind of braces himself, playing with a couch cushion in his lap, sipping the coffee he’d had just to stay up even though it’s long gone cold. 

Eventually, her face finally moves, eyes flipping open and landing on his, matching blue on blue. “You applied already?” Bea asks, in English, which kind of throws Gabe off. 

“Yeah,” he says, and Bea nods slowly.

“Okay. You can’t take it back, right?”

“No? What the hell, do you think I—”

“And he doesn’t know?” 

Gabe runs his hands through his hair. “No, that’s against the rules, he can’t know. Nobody knows except the front office and the league, and now you. Look, what’s the problem?”

Bea is quiet, and Gabe knows there’s something she wants to say. He can see it playing over her face, tightening the corners of her mouth, wrinkling her nose. But she shakes her head quickly and says, “It probably is the best if he picks you,” and Gabe lets out a sound of frustration.

“Of course it is! Better me than some lunatic stranger who might—look, it’s the best option out of a bunch of bad options, I get that. I’m just trying to help.”

Bea’s face finally softens, and she takes his hand, squeezing it lightly. “I know. I understand. I hope he picks you.”

Gabe thinks about pressing her—he knows with a clear certainty that she doesn’t approve of what he’d done and she’s holding back out of kindness; he thinks he’s the only person in the world she’d ever mince words for, and maybe that’s twin privilege—but it’s a fleeting, half-hearted impulse. 

The truth is, Gabe doesn’t want to hear about why he was wrong to do this. He doesn’t want to agree. He wants to keep telling himself it’s the right thing to do, the only option they could realistically take, and he doesn’t want to think about otherwise. He doesn’t want to think about how Tyson probably would disagree, and that he never really got a chance to.

All of that sits in the pit of his stomach, layered under the fear that Tyson won’t pick him, that the team will do something to stop them, that something else will go wrong. He’s kind of a mess with all of it, and he thinks Bea sees that. Because when Gabe just says, “Yeah, me too,” and gives a sad little shrug, Bea hugs him.

On Gabe’s phone, the team group text is buzzing, and it’s not until later that he checks it and stares at _how u gonna deal with two omega Tysons ??_ until his eyes sting and he has to tell himself why all of this is worth it. 

They avoid the topic for the rest of his time in Stockholm, deciding without saying so to just make the most of the rest of his time there. It’s still weird to not be talking about something so important with his sister, but it’s better that she knows, at least; he doesn’t feel quite so guilty about keeping it from her anymore. 

He does feel guilty about leaving fairly early in the summer. It feels like he blinks and it’s mid-July and he’s getting ready to head back to the North America accompanied only by Freddie and Zoey. They have training plans and cottage plans and it’s something they’ve done before but never quite so early as July; thankfully, Freddie hadn’t had any objections, probably because getting in some training time in Canada always makes his team happy.

Before Gabe leaves, Bea asks him quietly, “Heard anything?” and Gabe shakes his head.

“No. It’ll be next week the earliest, I bet; he’s gonna drag it out as close to his birthday as he can.”

Bea snorts. “At least he’s allowed to do that, then,” and Gabe feels like a jerk.

“I didn’t mean—he should take his time, obviously. I’m just—”

“Going crazy,” Bea finishes, and she hugs him. “I hope—it’s okay. But of course we’ll understand whatever happens. Promise.”

“Thank you,” Gabe breathes out, hugging her back maybe too hard. 

Too long of a plane ride later, Gabe and his human and dog companions take a night to recover in their rental, and then he tells his agent and then the group text where he is. He mostly gets generic welcomes back; Nate tells him _get out of my country_ and then texts him privately _why are you so early?_

Gabe just sends back a nondescript sunglasses emoji, not willing or really able to say too much about it yet, and mostly ignores his phone to take Zoey out and go for a run along the waterfront from High Park. It’s probably the most peace he’s felt since he got on the plane to get here, and it’s mostly shattered when he finally checks his phone again and sees that Tyson has woken up and texted him privately too.

 _Haha here to walk me down the aisle ?_ and Gabe puts his face in his hands. 

He’s glad Tyson can’t see his face when he texts him back: _Haha. When are you getting here?_ and Tyson texts him back right away, like he already had his phone in his hand. 

_6 days . I better see u_ and Gabe laughs helplessly, sitting alone at an outdoor table at a café where Zoey is lapping up water from a bowl near his feet. 

_I hope so_. Gabe sends. He does not send _So do you know who you picked yet?_ or _Please tell me it wasn’t the Harry Potter guy. Please._ or _Are you nervous?_ because none of that is necessary or right to say or ask yet. Tyson sends him back a bicep emoji, which makes little sense but is endearing enough that Gabe can smile at his phone and scrub at his face with relative ease. It helps to remember why he’s doing this. Tyson is good at reminding him. 

Gabe trains, distracts himself with Freddie and some GTA friends, spends a day at Skinner’s cottage with Zoey and a six pack of beer all to himself. They drive out to Kitchener for a day just because they can; no one’s there and it’s nice, nostalgic in a way that makes Gabe feel old even though it hasn’t even been that many years. 

He checks his phone pretty obsessively and Skinner says, “Rude,” after the first dozen or so times he does it. Gabe looks over guiltily; they’re driving back into the city early enough that they can get some drinks, even if it’s been a long day and Gabe’s not totally in the mood. Tyson will be here in one day, he hasn’t heard from his agent or the league or the PA or—one day, and Gabe will know either way.

Skinner doesn’t really look mad, though. He’s smiling, dimples out in full, relaxed in the driver’s seat, and Gabe’s relieved. They’d had a good day. Gabe slides his phone into the pocket of his shorts and puts his hands in his lap, and Skinner laughs.

“Oh geez, don’t take it personal, come on. I’m just kidding.”

“You were right though,” Gabe says, looking out the window as the view from the Gardiner passes by in a blur. “It’s rude. I was raised better.” He’s half-kidding too, and Skinner’s laugh is bright so he knows that.

“Yeah, okay. Mr. Manners here. You gonna tell me why you’re obsessed with your phone or what?”

“Or what,” Gabe says flatly, and Skinner reaches over to slug him in the arm. “Hey now! 10 and 2, Skins!” 

“Whatever,” Skinner says, laughing once more. Gabe has missed his laugh, misses hearing it all the time, and he keeps his phone in his pocket because it’s easier listening to Skinner laugh and thinking about how things were so much simpler the last time he tried anything with a teammate. It was easy and fun and it’s pretty much totally unfair that this is the way he’s on the brink of doing it again. 

When Skinner gives Gabe an out for drinks, telling him he’s kind of beat too, Gabe shakes his head. “Nah, let’s go. You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” because he kind of doesn’t want today to end. 

They wind up at a place that’s a little too loud, getting a ride after dropping off Skinner’s car, and do shots because “It’s summer!” Skinner sends more time sucking on a lime wedge than really drinking so Gabe gets ahead of him after a while, pulling him over to dance, dancing with the nearest strangers when Skinner backs off a little bit later. 

“Take it easy, eh?” Skinner says in his ear, breath hot on his neck. Gabe doesn’t quite listen, dancing too close, breathing in deeply as alcohol does its thing and make everyone’s scent a little sharper, hormones whistling around them. 

It’s the second to last night he can do any of this; the last night, probably, since he imagines he’ll be a nervous wreck until Tyson arrives. Tyson had tried to make dinner plans with him earlier— _before I meet the guy !—_ and Gabe had been vague about it, taking careful steps not to ask for details about _the guy_ , because he’s fairly certain from talking to Nate that no final decision has actually been made. 

So Gabe tries to have a good time. If that involves grinding his ass back against an alpha’s crotch when he gets too bold, enjoying the brief window of time before the alpha realizes he’s an alpha too, well, who can blame him, really? If all goes well he’s going to be bonding with an omega soon. He might not be able to indulge this side of himself for a while.

The alpha does notice, though, when he leans in and wraps his arms around Gabe and pulls him around so they’re front to front. He dips his face into Gabe’s neck and Gabe feels his eyes fly open. “Oh.”

“What’s wrong?” Gabe asks, and the alpha pulls away. 

“Sorry, man, didn’t realize,” and Gabe wishes he hadn’t, even if that’s selfish or wrong. He wishes it were impossible to tell whether someone’s an alpha or an omega or a beta or what the fuck ever, that everyone just smelled like a human and no one’s scent could ever give them away. Really, he wishes that it didn’t matter, that people could stop fucking caring. Back home it’s better and even Canada is supposed to be better than the US, but still. People care. It’s ridiculous but people care. 

“What’s wrong?” Gabe repeats foolishly, stubbornly, as the alpha pulls back and stares at him in confusion.

“You’re a—listen, I don’t do that, man. Sorry.”

He’s vaguely aware of Skinner fighting his way through the crowd to him, can feel him at his elbow, but that’s not enough for him to keep from spitting out, “Oh come on, you can fuck me just the same, or are you scared?”

“All right,” Skinner basically yells, dragging him off and towards the exit with his requisite surprising strength. “That’s enough for you tonight, weirdo. This isn’t the kind of place for all that, come on.”

“Oh fuck off,” Gabe says, trying to shrug Skinner off. “Grow up, it’s 2016. Why the hell do people still care about this shit?” 

Skinner has managed to get him outside in the sticky summer night air, messing with his phone one-handed while keeping ahold of the back of Gabe’s polo with the other. He shrugs when it seems Gabe is really demanding an answer. 

“I don’t know, but some do. It’s not worth starting a fight over, geez.”

“I wasn’t gonna start a fight,” Gabe says sulkily, and Skinner rolls his eyes. 

“Sure, bud. Whatever you say.” 

They go back to Skinner’s condo and chug water standing in the middle of his dark kitchen; Skinner tricks him into drinking more by making it a competition and Gabe is a little too drunk to realize until after. Then he takes off his polo and shorts and gets into the wrong bed; Skinner drags him out and into the spare room, cursing at him and telling him it’s ridiculous that he still needs a babysitter, “How’d they make you captain? Twice, two different idiot teams, what the hell man.” 

Gabe passes out in the right bed and Skinner ruthlessly fails to close the curtains before he leaves him, so Gabe wakes up to blinding sunlight streaming right at his face.

He also wakes up to a number of texts and, more alarmingly, a voicemail. He looks at the texts first, shaking a little, scrolling up the group text and freezing at Tyson’s text: _Will you accept this rose…??? Idk his name yet haha_ and then the rush of texts quizzing Tyson for details, none of which he provides. 

There are separate texts from Nate and EJ, EJ calling it “d-day” and Nate telling him to stalk Tyson in Toronto and find the guy and threaten him. Then there’s one from Tyson, pushing him for specific dinner plans, telling him he gets in tonight and he needs help picking out an outfit: _Im not using your tailor , I need these clothes to actually fit me , but I could use some input from Landesbeauty himself_ which is how Gabe knows he really wants to meet him because he’d called him Landesbeauty instead of Landesnerd. 

Before he can answer that, before he can even think about that, he looks at the text from his agent: _Ringa mig._ Then he listens to the brief voicemail telling him the same, adding that he has some news.

Still shaking, wrapped in Skinner’s spare room sheets, his mouth dry and tongue heavy even after all the water he drank, Gabe calls Peter and tries not to hold his breath completely because he already feels a little faint.

“Okay,” Peter says when he picks up the phone, in weary, tired English. “So, Barrie picked his alpha.”

“Okay,” Gabe says. And he waits.

And then it’s kind of surreal, because before Peter really gets out the words, “He picked you, Gabe. You will have to bond with him,” Gabe just kind of knows it. It feels like it’s what was always going to happen, always meant to happen. It feels right in that moment, even though it’s still fucked up, different layers of wrong. It’s still the best of the worst. He can still make things as right as possible, and he can do the most he can to help. 

“Okay,” Gabe breathes out, and he puts Peter on speakerphone so he can start texting Tyson back about dinner.

 

 

Officially, Gabe is supposed to meet with “his omega” at the league-mandated restaurant at noon sharp tomorrow, wearing a rather large pin featuring two crossed hockey sticks on his lapel. He gets these instructions, along with the pin, at a quick meetup with Peter and a league rep. 

Also at this meetup, he gets: a hotel keycard for a room booked for the next few days at the Fairmont; a “care package” he refuses to open because he’s pretty sure it’s sex supplies; information about the birth control Tyson takes, which he cuts off in the middle of the explanation in his one and only rude lapse of the day; the date of Tyson’s arbitration hearing, where they will have to have the bond tested and proven before Tyson and his agent can start arguing their case for his new contract, one week from Tyson’s birthday; and a hearty handshake and a very rough “Good luck, son.” 

Gabe says, “Thank you,” and does his usual too-hard handshake. He tells Peter he’s okay, tells him to head back without him, he’s got plans, and then goes and does three shots at the bar of the restaurant they’re in just so his hands will stop shaking. 

Then he has to go back to the rental to get ready to meet Tyson, unofficially. The league rep doesn’t know he’s doing this, and maybe it’s the wrong move; maybe he should go in when Tyson’s more prepared for it, braced for it. But he doesn’t think anything can prepare Tyson for it being him, and he can’t wait another night. 

He tells Freddie he’s taking Tyson out for an early birthday dinner—“He’ll be busy tomorrow, ah,” Freddie says, and for some reason Gabe doesn’t say “Yeah probably, and so will I.” For some reason he doesn’t tell him, or Skinner, who texted him earlier asking why he’d stolen Skinner’s only pressed suit and _how the fuck did it even fit, if you rip the seams my mom will kill you_. 

He doesn’t wear Skinner’s suit to meet Tyson, nor does he tell Skinner why he’s meeting Tyson. He doesn’t tell anyone that first night, wanting Tyson to be the first to hear it from him, knowing he deserves that much from him. 

Instead, Gabe simply gets ready, fidgeting over the hockey stick pin for a few moments before pocketing it and deciding he’s going to have use his words here. He doesn’t dress up, exactly, but he tries to dress nice, spending too much time on his hair, tucking his white button-down shirt in but rolling up the sleeves until they’re tight on his forearms. He’d scoped out the dessert menu at the place he’d picked; he’d picked up his own bottle of wine to bring because that always impresses Tyson for some reason, and he’d picked one he knows Tyson likes. 

It occurs to Gabe that he’s treating this like a date, which probably makes him a massive asshole. But this is going to be hard, and maybe awful, and he wants to make it as easy on Tyson as possible. 

Tyson keeps sending him update texts: when his flight gets in, when he takes a power nap, when he wakes up from the power nap, when he’s getting ready. _They put me up at the Fairmont, nice !_ and Gabe realizes they gave him Tyson’s fucking room key and throws it in the trash. Then he books a suite at the Four Seasons for good measure. 

When the time is right and Gabe can make himself stop fussing, he heads out to meet Tyson. He’s nervous, and he’s not sure if he feels better or worse once he sees Tyson and sees that he looks equally nervous: uncharacteristically early, fidgeting with his silverware, a glass of something amber on the rocks next to the wet ring on the tablecloth from his first drink. 

Tyson brightens when he sees Gabe and Gabe wants to memorize the happyish look on his face, his small smile, the way his eyebrows go up as Gabe nears him and his forehead wrinkles up as a result. He looks good too, his hair under control and his skin a little bronzed from beaching it too much, and when Gabe hugs him hello he smells like his regular Tyson smell layered under some kind of cologne. 

“Hey man,” Gabe says, squeezing Tyson hard and making him laugh.

“Easy there, bud. It’s been like four months, calm down. How’re you doing?”

They sit; Tyson seems to instantly shed his nervousness, opening up to Gabe like a sunflower, putting on something of a show as always but also genuinely glad to see him. Gabe wishes he didn’t know what Tyson’s about to, that this was just a simple, pleasant birthday dinner, and that his own nerves weren’t getting the best of him, choking him up a bit.

He knows he’s way off his game when, after they order and Tyson’s still just sort of chatting away at him: “Oh,” Gabe stumbles when Tyson shows him the new wallet Victoria got him for his birthday. “I didn’t get you a birthday present.”

Tyson squints at him. “What? You’re not paying for dinner?”

“Oh, of course I am, but—like a gift, I didn’t think of it.”

“Okay,” Tyson says slowly, giving him a distinct _you weirdo_ look. “When’s the last time you gave me an actual present, Gabe?”

He’s right, of course. Gabe is just an idiot, and half listening to Tyson, half thinking about what he has to tell him right now, before he can say anything else remotely significant to him. “Yeah, I mean—listen, Tyson—”

And then their first course comes, and Tyson’s way too distracted with their cheese board and asking for extra crostini for Gabe to blurt anything important out. 

He reels back and concentrates on food for a few moments, trying to gather himself together about. Tyson raves about burrata and honey and walnuts and “carbing up” with the crostini and Gabe picks at his own plate and smiles at Tyson enjoying himself when he can’t help it.

And Tyson says, “Oh, speaking of presents,” and pulls out his matching hockey stick pin, almost identical to Gabe’s but a bit smaller. It makes Gabe’s nostrils flare, anger spiking a bit—of all the stupid, heinous little details—but Tyson just fiddles with it on the table next to his plate, then holds it out for Gabe to look closer. 

“I’m supposed to wear this tomorrow to meet the guy. It really is like a blind date, he’s supposed to have one too. The birthday’s gonna be wild, huh?” 

Gabe takes a big, deep breath, and puts his fork down. He doesn’t take the pin from Tyson, doesn’t look closer at it, and simply knows he’s not going to get a better opening than this. “Tyson,” he says in a tone that makes Tyson’s smile freeze on his face a little. 

“What’s up?”

And Gabe takes out his own pin. 

“So,” he says, and Tyson lets out a startled laugh. 

“Oh wow, what the hell, how’d you get one of those? It’s like the same one.” Tyson puts his pin down on the table and plucks Gabe’s out of his hands, setting them side by side. “Weird, mine is smaller. But seriously, where’d you—”

“The league rep gave it to me, because—I’m the alpha you picked,” Gabe says hurriedly, all out in one breath. Tyson’s smile fades for a moment, and then it goes crooked, his brow furrowing.

“What?”

“I—I applied, a couple months ago,” Gabe tells him, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible. Tyson is just staring at him with the same ardently puzzled look, face almost comically distorted. Gabe wishes he could appreciate how stupid he looks but he has to focus. “Like, officially. I got my application approved by the PA and put it in the pool, and you picked it blind. So it’s all by the book, all official—”

“Wait,” Tyson says sharply, holding his hands up. “Wait a second. Is this a joke?”

Gabe gives a small, bitter little laugh. “No,” he says. “It’s real.”

Tyson laughs, too, but then he stops when Gabe just keeps looking at him. “Are you serious?”

“I swear it, Tyson. It’s totally real. It’s all official, I promise, you—you picked me.”

“Jesus fucking—Gabe, what the _fuck_ ,” Tyson says, voice going higher as reality starts to settle in. “Oh my god.” He puts his head in his hands, and Gabe tries to be careful, choosing each word and turning it over in his mind before it leaves his tongue.

“I just—this really seems like the best case scenario, right? We can have that—we can have an arrangement, like you were saying. I’m not the kind of guy that’s gonna make you do anything or—”

“Yeah, except fucking bond with you,” Tyson spits out, taking his hands away. Gabe feels like he’s been slapped, and he must look appropriately wounded because some of the fire goes out of Tyson’s eyes, but not all of it. “We talked about this. I told you I wanted you guys to stay out of it.”

“And I kept the guys out of it, like you said,” Gabe says quietly, and Tyson throws his hands up.

“Are you kidding—I didn’t mean do _this_. Jesus. This is a total disaster.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Do you understand what this means?” Tyson asks, leaning over the table. “We have to have sex now. You have to knot me, and then we have to—skin on skin, and stay close for _days_. If we don’t get traded—which, okay, this is totally why everyone’s talking about you getting traded, what the fuck is the matter with you—they’re gonna make us move in together. The bond has to be real, you get that, right?”

“I know all that,” Gabe says, sitting up a little straighter. He’s not mad, exactly—Tyson owns the floor for that right now, and he has every right to it—but he’s not quite happy getting condescended to. Peter had gone through the same lecture with him, and he’s sure he’ll hear it countless other times once this gets out, but Tyson should know him by now and know he doesn’t do things halfway. “I know what I’m getting into, Tyson. It’s worth it. It’s going to be better than the alternative.”

“How the fuck do you know that? Maybe I could’ve picked someone—”

“But you didn’t. You picked me. So somewhere inside, someplace you won’t admit, this feels like a good idea to you. I felt like a good idea to you.” It’s grasping at straws, probably, but it’s something that’s been going through Gabe’s head since he found out, some faint, pleased little part of him he doesn’t particularly want to examine too much.

Tyson stares back at him, mouth gaped in disbelief for a moment. He sputters for words, then says, “Because you cheated!” with a voice shaky enough that Gabe knows he doesn’t fully mean it.

“Nothing I put in the application was untrue.”

“But you put it in there because you knew I’d pick it. All that stuff about having a partner, letting me be independent—you totally cheated, Gabe.”

“I wanted to be a good choice for you,” Gabe mutters, and Tyson groans.

“But it’s not—you don’t understand. I told you I didn’t want anyone stuck in this. That means you, too. This isn’t fair.”

“No,” Gabe tells him, shaking his head. “What’s not fair is that you had to do this, that you had to pick anyone. I just wanted it to be me because it was the only way I could see this not being horrible. You’re my friend, and my teammate, and I’m the—”

“Oh my god, no one is that fucking obsessed with being captain,” Tyson exclaims. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I don’t care. I had to do this, I couldn’t just let you get married off to some stranger without trying my best.” Gabe shrugs. “Maybe I’m ridiculous, so what. You picked me, so obviously you’re ridiculous too.”

“This is Sakic’s fault,” Tyson says bitterly. He shakes his head too, leaning back in his seat dejectedly. “He put this in your head, he was thinking of this from the beginning. I’m so fucking sick of them deciding things for us, man.”

“This was all me,” Gabe insists, even as Tyson keeps shaking his head. 

“You don’t get it.”

“Here’s what I get.” It’s Gabe’s turn to lean forward, elbows on the table, forcing eye contact. “You picked me, so it’s done. We either bond or this whole thing blows up and becomes an even bigger mess than it was already. I mean, it could blow up anyway. They could trade us, they could trade me, they could just trade you, who the fuck knows. But they can’t stop us from bonding, so no matter what, we have to do that part and follow the rules so they can’t hold anything against you.”

“And you couldn’t tell me any of this?” Tyson asks, eyes flashing with anger again. “Like, you just decided this all on your own and didn’t think to ask me or let me know what you were doing—even though I _specifically said_ I wanted you guys out of this.”

“I couldn’t risk it,” Gabe answers, shrugging. “If it got out that you knew, the whole application would be compromised. The front office was already going nuts about how we have to follow the rules; I couldn’t let something happen to the application. I’m sorry. I knew you wouldn’t be happy but—I did what I had to do.”

“Nate’s right. You are every fucking stereotype.”

“That’s not fair. This isn’t alpha shit, this is just me, I’m—I had to do this.”

“Why?”

“Because it was the right thing to do!” Gabe says, maybe too loud. Tyson snorts, and yeah, that sounds ridiculous, but it’s the truth. It has to be the only truth, at least, the only one he can admit to. 

“I don’t even really blame you,” Tyson says, and now he sounds tired and sad. “This shit gets pummeled into your brain for years. It’s ten times worse in hockey, like, I know. It’s not fair.”

“I’m not brainwashed, come on. I knew what I was doing and why. Stop patronizing me.”

“See, it’s not so fun, is it?” There’s a small, bitter smile on Tyson’s face, and Gabe slumps back, defeated. He feels awful about this, and repeatedly insisting he had to do it isn’t really helping, but it’s pretty much all he has. He doesn’t see another way out except for going forward, and he’ll dig his heels in on that if he has to. Even if makes him a stereotypical alpha meathead. He’ll be that if that’s what gets Tyson his relative freedom. 

“Look,” Gabe starts, and Tyson puts his hands up. 

“All right, stop. Let me think for a minute.”

“I just—”

“I said stop, okay. I’m sick of you not listening to what I want.”

That shuts Gabe right up, because it’s totally fair and he’s earned it. Tyson rolls his eyes when Gabe just sits there quietly, waiting him out; then he gestures for their waiter to come over and asks for a corkscrew. “I can do it,” he says when the waiter goes to open their wine for them, and he opens the wine and pours a nearly overflowing glass for himself. He gulps it down with one hand on the glass and one hand on the bottle. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Gabe asks cautiously. 

Tyson nods, lips wet and red with the wine. “Yeah, okay. You’re right. The only thing we can do now is go through with it, it’ll be a total shitshow if we back out now. Thanks for that.”

“Tyson…”

“No, it’s whatever. It’s done now. I’m not—happy. But I was never going to be happy, so.” He shrugs. “At least you’re hot, right?”

“Nice, thanks,” Gabe says, rolling his eyes. “It’s not—it’s not going to be bad, Tyson. Nothing really has to change. Once the bond takes, there’s nothing we have to worry about, really. You can live your life and I’ll live mine and we’ll just—be roommates or something.”

“If we don’t get traded.”

“Right. If we don’t get traded.”

“So we have to fuck now,” Tyson says, grinning a little. “That should be fun.”

“We don’t have to do it right now,” Gabe says. Tyson’s grin widens.

“Oh what, you’re chickening out now? I thought you knew what you signed up for.”

Gabe feels his temper flare, and he works hard, as always, to keep it in check. “I mean, we should eat first, no?”

“Sure, why not? I usually don’t need anyone to buy me dinner first, but—”

“But I like to buy dinner first,” Gabe says shortly, and Tyson tilts his head back and laughs hard, nasty and a little mean.

“Of course you do. Fuck. This is gonna be a mess, you know that, right?”

“It’s really not, come on. We can be adults about this.” 

“You’re 23, stop acting like you’re some wizened old—whatever. Okay. Let’s eat, then.”

So they eat. With exaggerated enthusiasm, Tyson starts talking about the Blue Jays, like he gives a single fuck about baseball, but Gabe plays along as they work through their meal. When the waiter offers a dessert menu, Gabe sees Tyson about to decline with too much false cheer and cuts in. 

“You can get dessert.”

“Thanks for the permission, alpha,” Tyson chirps back immediately, basically sneering at him. “Maybe stop bossing me around already?”

“I’m not—I’m just saying, you like dessert, I know this place has good dessert—”

“Maybe I don’t want dessert. Maybe I don’t want to get overly stuffed before I get stuffed again.” He gives Gabe a ridiculous, eyebrow-raised once over that has Gabe’s face burning as he glances up at the waiter, staring at a spot on the far wall instead of them. “You said you were decently sized; I’m just trying to—”

“Okay, enough,” Gabe says, huffing and shoving the dessert menu back at the waiter. “I’ll just take the check. Thanks.” The waiter nods, still without looking at them, and Tyson laughs as he retreats. 

Then his laughter kind of fades and he looks down at the mostly cleared table, fiddling with the pins still there. He takes the last swig of the wine he hadn’t shared and clears his throat, and Gabe feels a smile curl over his face.

“You really want dessert, don’t you?”

“Goddamnit,” Tyson says, and Gabe laughs what feels like his first genuine laugh of the night. 

They leave together then, and by unspoken agreement pick up ice cream at their first stop in Gabe’s rental car, sitting in the parking lot to eat cones and make a plan. “We’ll get supplies next,” Gabe says, and Tyson rolls his eyes. 

“What supplies do we need?”

“I’m not using what the league gave us, gross,” Gabe says. “Also I got a different hotel room, fuck the Fairmont.” 

“You’re such a revolutionary.” 

“Listen—”

“All right, I don’t care about the hotel, but what do we need?” Tyson thinks about it. “Snacks?”

“Uh, lube? Food? What if—you know…” Gabe trails off awkwardly, not wanting to put words to it, and Tyson squints at him.

“What if what?”

“You _know_.”

“Oh my god, no, I clearly don’t, so maybe stop acting like a coward and use words? It’s gonna be pretty hard to offend me any more today so why don’t you just—”

“What if we trigger your heat?” Gabe asks, annoyed but still trying to be delicate. 

Tyson laughs, shaking his head. “Oh, no worries, that’s not going to happen.”

That’s a good thing, but Gabe’s first instinct is to be insulted. “Okay? How do you know? Like, that happens during bonding sometimes, I’m not making it up.”

“Yeah, thanks, I went to health class too. It’s fine though, my birth control lets me schedule my heats. I only have it once a year and I’m timed for the summer. I already went through it last month.” He gives Gabe a thumbs up and takes a big bite of ice cream. “It’s all good.” 

“Oh,” Gabe says. Tyson laughs again.

“What are you, disappointed?”

“No! Of course not, I just—didn’t know that.” He wrinkles his nose. “I’m pretty sure the league rep tried to tell me, but—”

“Oh god, I know. He gave me this little pamphlet about how to prep for your first knot.” Tyson’s full on cracking up now. “First knot, what a joke. I told him I practiced on butternut squash, that shut him up.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gabe says. He tries, really hard, not to laugh, but he only lasts a few seconds and then he’s losing it, hunching over the steering wheel. “There is something wrong with you.”

“Whatever, man. He opened that can of worms, not me!” 

“Unbelievable.” Gabe doesn’t hold back the laughter anymore, and Tyson seems content, finishing up his ice cream with a small smile. “Okay, so we definitely need lube, then.”

“I mean, if you want. It’s not necessary.” Tyson definitely catches the slightly alarmed look Gabe throws him because he rolls his eyes again, but he also looks a little embarrassed, the bridge of his nose pinking. “I get wet sometimes even if I’m not in heat. Some omegas do, I’m not a freak or anything.” He sniffs and shoots Gabe a wink. “Only if it’s really good, though, so yeah, better hedge your bets with the lube, I guess.” 

“Oh, my god,” Gabe says, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “We’re getting lube, but it’s also going to be really good. So stop it.” He’s working very hard not to think about Tyson getting wet, and how hot it sounds, because Tyson also sounds a bit self-conscious about it, but. Well.

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. You’ll see.” Something familiar but also just slightly left of center has Gabe’s stomach heating up, and it’s made his voice low, enough that Tyson is looking at him with something akin to heat in his eyes. He’s smiling, too, and Gabe smiles back, and this is flirting, he realizes. They’re totally flirting with each other and it feels natural and easy and yeah, this is definitely not going to be the mess Tyson thinks it is. Maybe. At least this part.

“Yeah, I guess I will,” Tyson says, breaking eye contact and looking out the window. “Hurry up and finish your ice cream.”

“Sure thing.”

Once they get moving again, they pull up in front of a Shoppers and Tyson says, “Let me go in, I know what to get,” and Gabe rolls his eyes.

“I thought you didn’t need lube, how do you know what to get,” and Tyson snorts.

“I know what to get, relax. I want snacks too. Why don’t you tell everyone you’re gonna have to be attached to my hip for the next few days, eh?” Gabe starts, realizing that’s not the worst idea, and that he’s been so caught up in Tyson for the past little while that maybe he needs to remember that the rest of the world exists. “Yeah, I thought so.”

“I was just so—I didn’t even think of what to tell people,” Gabe admits, looking down at his phone. Freddie knows not to expect him too early but maybe he should know he’s not coming home tonight and—yeah, he didn’t totally plan for this happening today. He’s not sure why.

“It’ll all be public after the arbitration hearing anyway, so whatever,” Tyson says. He points at Gabe. “You’re gonna tell the boys, buddy. You got us into this. Don’t write checks you can’t cash.”

“All right,” Gabe says, putting his hands up. “That’s fair.” He’s a little hysterical thinking of telling their teammates, and he has no idea how. So he shelves that as Tyson heads in and thinks about what to text Freddie, at the very least. 

He finally settles on _Staying the night with Tyson, call you tomorrow? Tell Zoey I love her._ which is both rude and overdramatic but whatever. Freddie texts him back immediately with _Wtffff_ and then _?????????_ over and over again until Gabe sighs and sends back _TOMORROW_ and then puts him on do not disturb.

He texts Bea, too: _It’s happening. Talk tomorrow._ It’s the middle of the night in Stockholm, which is a relief, and he hopes he’s asleep when Bea next checks her phone. He might just put his whole stupid phone in airplane mode. 

Gabe still has a ton of unanswered texts from the guys but those are going to have to stay that way for the time being. As Tyson appears through the automatic doors of the drugstore, two totes he had to pay for held in each hand and full of what seem to be different kinds of junk food and hopefully some goddamn lubricant, Gabe knows he has a job to do before he faces the rest of the music. He steels himself. 

“All right,” Tyson says, loading the bags in the back seat and then hopping into the passenger side. “I’m ready to get alpha-pounded, let’s get to it.” 

“Oh my god,” Gabe says, laughing a little helplessly. “You’re the worst.”

“I don’t think you’re allowed to say that to me after what you just pulled, Gabe. Like, I get insult amnesty for at least a month.”

“Put your seatbelt on.”

“Yes, alpha.”

“Stop _saying_ that!”

“Stop bossing me around!” 

“This is going to be real fun,” Gabe says, shaking his head. He’s smiling, though, and Tyson is too, and he’d never really imagined the mechanics of how this could go, never really let him picture actually having sex with Tyson too vividly. But this lead-up—it definitely feels like some kind of foreplay, as familiar as it is, as much as they’ve done this before. It makes sense to him. There’s something charged and purposeful about it, and Gabe would be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

He thinks Tyson likes it too, and maybe that’s the hottest part.

 

 

It’s kind of gratifying that this is the easy part—slipping into their fancy suite, unpacking everything from the drugstore, dropping onto a loveseat together and not leaving any space between them—because Gabe’s pretty sure the next little while after this is going to be tough. This is just sex, sort of. They can handle this. 

“Lube,” Tyson says, dropping the bottle into Gabe’s lap and smiling at him. “Ready to get this going?”

“Sure,” Gabe says, and they reach out at the same time, laughing when their arms kind of knock against each other. “Okay, false start.”

“Real smooth,” Tyson tells him, and then he puts an exaggeratedly concerned face on. “Wait a minute.”

“What?”

“You’re not a virgin, are you?” Scowling, Gabe reaches over and pulls Tyson into his lap, taking a very brief second to enjoy his warmth and the vibrations of his laughter on top of him before he pulls him down and kisses the rest of the laughter away. 

Tyson kisses him back with little to no hesitance, opening up easily. Gabe keeps one hand on Tyson’s waist and one hand around his arm and just tries to kiss him as thoroughly as he can, head spinning with it after a while.

Too much of this feels surreal, like this is happening too quickly, too easily. There should be an awkward stage, maybe, but even when they shift and move their mouths together and Gabe accidentally snaps his teeth over Tyson’s bottom lip and breathes out, “Sorry,” it feels right anyway. Tyson’s shrug feels right. The way he bites Gabe back, on purpose, a little sharp and a little cute, feels really right.

They kind of sink against each other, Tyson giving Gabe all his weight, Gabe folding back into the cushions of the loveseat, kissing and kissing again. Tyson shoves his hands through Gabe’s hair pretty forcefully, takes his breaths in the crook of Gabe’s neck, and Gabe lets his own hands wander, up the back of Tyson’s shirt once he untucks it from his pants, around the back of his thigh where he squeezes tight.

Tyson makes a noise that sounds like “Ah,” and Gabe kisses his chin and squeezes his thigh again, hard, to hear and feel the breath Tyson sucks in. His scent is just starting to get overwhelming, like second dessert, and Gabe tries to rearrange his senses: kissing the sharp taste of wine out of Tyson’s mouth, the sweet taste of ice cream, digging deep. 

When they break away next, Tyson is red-faced and grinning at him, and Gabe grins back. “Okay,” Tyson says, because he seems literally incapable of ever leaving anything unsaid. “Not bad so far, a little messy—” His lips are shiny with both of their spit, and Gabe rolls his eyes. 

“When have you ever done anything not messy, Tyson?”

“It’s not a critique, just an observation!”

“Did I ask?”

“Maybe you should’ve,” Tyson tells him, and Gabe pulls him down again, kissing him harder because he deserves it. Tyson responds as eager as ever but also decides to grind down against him, which—maybe Gabe deserves that too. It makes his nostrils flare and his blood heat up, and Tyson says something like, “Mmm,” against his mouth, which doesn’t exactly help. 

He doesn’t really want to stop kissing Tyson at all, not even when they knock the lube off the loveseat and Tyson tries to laugh around his tongue and kind of bounces on his dick with the force of it. Gabe doesn’t let his focus break, renewing his efforts to kiss Tyson out of his mind, pleased with the rumbly, content sounds Tyson lets out when the laughter dies down, and then letting out a groan of frustration when Tyson moves away again. 

“Tyson, Jesus, what?”

Tyson responds by reaching between them and undoing Gabe’s belt, tongue sticking out in concentration as his fingers work fast. Gabe groans as his trousers are undone too, and groans harder as Tyson pulls him out, half-hard in Tyson’s hand. 

“Hmm,” Tyson says, and Gabe scrubs a hand over his face and blinks up at him incredulously. “Dick size decent, huh? I mean, I’d thought about it, but I never really put a label on it. No one can say you’re not modest.”

“Why,” Gabe says, staring up at the ceiling. He’s fucking getting harder over Tyson’s completely uncalled for dick commentary and this is very unfair. “Why are you so rude?”

“Rude! I’m not being rude, I’m just saying—”

“Why do you have to say anything?” He’s just—holding Gabe’s dick between them and smiling; his eyes are dark and his hair is a mess and Gabe is maybe way too attracted to him in this moment. He also wants to throw him. 

Tyson shrugs. Then he leans over, snaps up the lube, and starts jerking Gabe off with a slicked up hand, watching his dick grow and harden all the way like a fucking scientist, while Gabe tries not to lose his mind beneath him. 

“Definitely modest,” Tyson says after a while, and Gabe can’t tell him to fuck off because he’s biting his own wrist and trying not to outright fuck Tyson’s hand like a desperate teenager. “I wanna see that knot pop, though.” 

“That’s it,” Gabe snaps, and he pushes up hard enough that Tyson lets him go to keep his bearings on the back of the loveseat, leaving a lube handprint on the fabric. “For fuck’s sake.” 

“Oh, here he goes,” Tyson says, letting Gabe push him around until he’s crowded against the corner of the loveseat. His eyes are bright and excited. “Viking mode, let’s go.”

“You’re a lunatic.”

“And you’ve got some knotting to do, so why don’t you—” Gabe cuts off whatever Tyson was going to say with another hard kiss, and then he starts pulling at Tyson’s loosened shirt, tugging it off quickly and thoroughly. “Fuck,” Tyson says, and then he repeats that when Gabe goes for his belt and his zipper, tugging his pants and underwear down as far as he can get them in this position while kissing him at the same time. “All right, we’re going naked now? Perfect.”

“Yes,” Gabe grits out, and he scrambles to catch up to Tyson, pulling off his own shirt, hissing as he tries to push his pants off and bumps his suddenly too-hard dick. “Jesus, let’s just—”

“We can go to the bed,” Tyson says. He’s breathing hard and Gabe’s happy about that; when he looks between them, Tyson’s just as hard as he is, and on an impulse he almost doesn’t allow himself, Gabe cups his hand around Tyson’s ass and lets his fingers feel around for—“Fuck, _okay_ ,” Tyson whimpers as Gabe’s fingertips stroke through slick heat between his cheeks, soft over his hole. “Bed, come on.”

“Come on,” Gabe says, and he pulls Tyson in for one last, hungry kiss, shaking with it. It still seems too fast, that they’re this into each other already, that it’s so fucking good and they haven’t even really done anything yet, but whatever. Maybe that’s what bonding is: too much, too fast and too big so you need to stick together to recover from it. Maybe that’s what he didn’t know he was getting into. 

They stumble out of their bottoms and get to the bed, hands all over each other. Now that he’s emboldened to, Gabe touches Tyson everywhere, his ass again, cupping his dick and closing his hand around it until Tyson bites his shoulder and makes breathy sounds against it and Gabe can feel his eyes squeezing shut, his eyelashes flickering over his skin. 

“I’m gonna make it good,” Gabe promises as he pushes Tyson back on the bed, crawls over him, takes his dick again. He pushes his own against Tyson’s thigh because he needs it; he feels like he’s burning up and he forgot the fucking lube on the floor again but— 

He slips his fingers inside Tyson easily, everything slick, Tyson’s scent so heavy here he feels dizzy with it. Gabe concentrates on opening him up and pauses only to duck his head down between Tyson’s thighs, to breathe him in and kiss the soft skin there until Tyson is squeezing his head and reaching to tug on his hair. 

“Gabe, okay, hey,” Tyson says, panting out, eyes blown wide and a little wild. Gabe leans up and resumes fingering him, watching him finally unfurl beneath him until he’s every bit as raw nerves and pulsing heat as Gabe feels right now. 

“You’re ready,” Gabe says, hoping Tyson hears that he’s impressed; he’s gone through full-on heat with omegas before and none of them had gotten this wet for him. Tyson’s not there and promised he won’t be, but he’s still so deliciously turned on and it’s making Gabe feel heady with power and satisfaction and appreciation. 

Tyson flushes deeply, opens his thighs impossibly wide, and Gabe feeds him yet another kiss for that, rubs his dick approvingly until Tyson is scratching at his back and panting “Hey, yeah, Gabe—” into his open lips, voice high and reedy.

Gabe wraps his slick fingers around his own dick, gives it a few pulls, and then positions it right to push into Tyson, slowly but firmly, giving it all one motion. 

“Oh god,” Tyson says when Gabe is fully seated. He’s blinking up at the ceiling and Gabe leans into his line of sight carefully, waiting for his eyes to focus up at his. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Gabe says, laughing shakily, smiling when Tyson smiles at him. “I’m gonna—”

“Do it.” 

So Gabe fucks in and out, careful at first and then not so careful when Tyson claws at him and demands more. He leaves Tyson’s dick alone when Tyson swats his hand away and tells him, “Focus, I got it,” and fucks Tyson harder for that, moving them steadily up the bed until they’re sunken again, slightly buried in pillows they probably should’ve cleared off first. 

Tyson gasps out encouragement, demands for more, and Gabe gives it his all, arms shaking as they grip at Tyson’s thighs. When he feels his orgasm approaching he tries to jerk Tyson off again and Tyson says, “Just keep—” way too coherently. It’s a little disconcerting that his instinct is to just listen, to give it to Tyson harder, to not even hesitate when he starts to come. 

Years of pulling out and avoiding knotting anyone go out the window in that moment as he pushes in one last time and comes with a low, deep groan, slumping over and letting Tyson’s thighs drop around him. Tyson’s knees come up to cradle his ribs and Gabe barely has the sense to realize this really isn’t the best position for this to happen, to shift around and shove Tyson a little until he’s on his side and Gabe’s spooned up behind him, snug inside him. 

He feels his knot growing and Tyson moans out and says, “Can you—” and Gabe doesn’t get what he’s asking for until he feels Tyson squirming. It’s still barely connecting, his brain fuzzy and come dumb, something raw and primal inside him protesting when he slips out slightly. The thickest part of his knot is at Tyson’s rim, stretching him wide. 

“Yeah,” Tyson sighs, and Gabe’s eyes fly open. “You can—please. Fuck me with it.”

“Jesus,” Gabe breathes out, and he tightens pretty much all of his limbs around Tyson and then fucking does as he’s told, fucking Tyson very gently and very purposefully with his knot. He barely moves, just rocking in deeper and then out slightly, punching deep moans out of Tyson with every single motion, until Tyson is curling up in his arms and freezing all over as he comes.

Gabe sinks in as far as he can and stays, breathing harshly and still kind of tingling with disbelief. Tyson goes limp against him, humming contentedly, and Gabe’s not going to take his arms away from Tyson for anything but he wants to, for a brief moment, just to reach down and feel where they’re connected, where Tyson’s stretched still so tight around him. 

He gives them each a few moments to catch their breath. Gabe’s muscles kind of ache as he comes down and he can’t imagine what it feels like for Tyson, but he’d wanted it that hard and like _that_ so—he fights it for a while before he kisses the back of Tyson’s neck and whispers, “Okay?”

“Mm,” Tyson says, thick and hazy. He wriggles a little, Gabe’s knot still locked in tight, and to Gabe it feels like better reassurance until Tyson gets verbal again. 

So Gabe settles in to wait out his knot, keeping Tyson wrapped up in his arms like you’re supposed to in bonding but really because he wants to hold him tight, the way Tyson’s holding his knot so well. 

He feels it start to recede after about 10 minutes, a little on the longer side for him, but maybe it’s different inside someone. It certainly feels better than anything Gabe’s ever experienced, and it’s a chore to start to pull out as it shrinks more. He has to rethink the best thing he’s ever experienced when Tyson reaches back and grabs his hip to keep him from pulling out completely; _that_ might feel better than anything he’s ever experienced. 

Gabe beams at the back of Tyson’s neck, smothers his smile into the top of his spine.

They wait until the knot goes down completely. Then Tyson releases him with a careful pat on his hip and Gabe slips out with a sigh, staying close. 

“Really okay?” Gabe asks, and he can practically hear Tyson rolling his eyes. “Sorry. I’ve just never—”

“Oh my god,” Tyson mumbles, picking up his head up a little. “You _were_ a virgin!”

“Stop it,” Gabe says, laughing against Tyson’s shoulder blades. “No. But I’ve never knotted anyone before.” 

Tyson turns at that, looking surprised, and Gabe doesn’t waste much time touching him again even if they’re facing each other now. The bond needs skin on skin and Gabe’s not complaining; he strokes his fingers down Tyson’s arm, in the dip of his hip, palms at his belly. Tyson holds onto his other wrist, fingers tight in a circle, and keeps looking at Gabe until he shrugs.

“What? Pullout game’s pretty strong.” Tyson cracks a smile at that, but he still looks curious. “I never wanted to bond with anyone accidentally. I like—”

“You’re a cuddler,” Tyson says, and Gabe wrinkles his nose and nods slowly. Tyson laughs, bright, and rolls in so his face is buried in the crook of Gabe’s neck, Gabe’s arms all around him again. “S’okay. Me too.”

“Of course you are,” Gabe says, feeling warm. And then his chest hurts a little when he thinks of how Tyson’s never actually been held like this after getting knotted, at least not by the alpha who knotted him. It’s upsetting and maybe Tyson feels that—maybe that’s the bond starting to kick in, though Gabe doesn’t feel much yet. All he can do is smell their mingled scent, sweet and fresh and sugary and woodsy—because he leans back a little and gives Gabe a small smile.

“It’s fine. Nate’s an awesome cuddler.” 

“Nate never knotted you,” Gabe grumbles, huffing when Tyson shrugs. “I could’ve—”

“I wouldn’t have asked,” Tyson says lowly. “I asked enough. We weren’t like that.” He snorts. “Check us out now.”

“At least I know now why you let alphas knot you all the time,” Gabe says. He strokes his hand down Tyson’s side again, reliving a twitching urge to touch him where he’s only damp now, a little sticky. Tyson’s breath hitches a little as Gabe slips his fingers between his legs and thumbs at his hole, still open and pliant. “You like that,” Gabe whispers, a bit wondrous, watching Tyson get redder and redder.

Tyson shrugs again, and then shudders as Gabe shifts them so he can more comfortably push his fingers in where Tyson’s wettest, slick with Gabe’s come and wide open from his knot. It’s got to be one of the hottest things Gabe’s ever done for how dirty and secret it feels, and how Tyson just lets him, mouth falling open a little and breaths coming sharper as Gabe stretches his fingers out.

“That’s so fucking hot,” Gabe says, because Tyson should know. “That’s—you took it so good.”

“Gabe,” Tyson breathes out, shaky and quiet. He’s starting to get hard again and Gabe is fast to pick up his dick between them, enjoying the way his whole hand closes around it, gently rubbing under the head of it with his thumb. “Oh god.”

Gabe didn’t get to see Tyson come; he only felt it, and now he’s hungry for it, heating pooling in his own gut as he fucks his fingers in and out of Tyson as hard and as fast as he’d put his dick there. “You’re so loose,” Gabe says, daring and a little breathless, his dick starting to feel heavy and aching between his thighs. “Because I fucked you with my knot, right?”

“Ah,” Tyson says, gulping for air, hand going to Gabe’s wrist where he’s still cradling his dick more than stroking it. He saves most of the movement for his fingers, licking his lips and putting four of them in Tyson so it finally feels tight. 

Tyson’s eyes, heavy-lidded, fly open, and he humps at Gabe’s palm with some desperation. “Yeah, that’s—more, come on,” and Gabe gives him a wet, open-mouthed kiss on his lips, dips the very tip of his thumb at the edge of Tyson’s hole, and gives his dick a short, quick tug until he feels thick warmth spurt into his palm, seeping through his tightened fingers. 

He pulls back to watch Tyson’s face, screwed up and then lax in a moment, only twitching again when Gabe pulls his fingers out of him slowly and carefully. “You could take my whole hand,” Gabe says, very quiet, hardly able to believe he’s saying it out loud. He pushes his hard dick against Tyson’s hip. “I could knot you again and you’d love it, right?”

“Yeah,” Tyson breathes out, blinking up at Gabe. Gabe doesn’t knot him again, though; he looks too fucked out and relaxed, dazed. So Gabe jerks himself off with the mess in his hand, sticking close, smearing pre-come and Tyson’s come all over Tyson’s hip until he comes over it, knot swelling beneath his palm. Tyson makes that humming sound again and reaches down to run his fingers over the knot, making a circle around it, squeezing it until Gabe whimpers. 

He lets Tyson play with it until it starts going down, and then he fits them closer together again, filthy and exhausted, skin on skin. “Yeah,” Tyson sighs, rubbing his thumb along the inside of Gabe’s wrist, tangling their feet at the ankles and sinking into his hold. “It’s so good.”

“You’re so good,” Gabe says nonsensically, and he feels Tyson’s breath on his arm when he chuckles. “Are you crashing?”

“Mm.” 

“You don’t want to get cleaned up?”

“Fuck no,” Tyson says, clearer now. “We’ve got time for that, come on. Gotta stick together for a bit.”

It’s a jarring and perhaps unwelcome reminder of why they’re here, why they just did all that. They’re bonding. This, what they’re doing now, holding each other and squirming under the covers and letting come and sweat and slick dry over their skin, that’s bonding. And they have to bond; they didn’t just decide to do this. They had sex because their league told them they had to. They did it because Gabe put himself in this position. 

“I’m really—” Gabe starts, swallowing hard past the sudden lump in his throat. “I’m glad it was good for you. I really am.”

He wishes, now, that they’d done this before. That he’d held Tyson before, and kissed him, and fucked him as hard as he likes just because he wanted to. And in the musky quiet of their hotel suite, Toronto falling asleep around them, Gabe can probably admit to himself that he’d wanted to, before. He hasn’t wanted to think about it, hasn’t wanted to let that be the reason he’d put his application in, and even now it makes him a little sick. 

Patty was right. He wanted to fuck Tyson, and he wants to fuck him again, and probably none of it was the right thing to do, even if it’s the better thing over the alternatives. 

Gabe blinks hard, looking over Tyson’s shoulder and trying, as always, to keep himself under control. His eyes catch on the time showing on the digital alarm clock by the bed, and he whispers, “Happy birthday,” into Tyson’s hair. 

Tyson laughs and pulls back to look at Gabe, and his smiles drops a little when he catches the look on Gabe’s face. 

“I’m sorry,” Gabe breathes out, and he can see Tyson swallow hard. 

“I know,” Tyson says, licking his lips, reaching out to cup the side of Gabe’s face. “I get it.” 

“I should’ve told you, at least.”

“I really do understand. It’s like—” He gets red again, embarrassed like he gets whenever Gabe picks him up and takes him to Denny’s. His chin is raised, and this is the impossible paradox of Tyson that Gabe loves: the dueling shame and pride he constantly carries himself and his dynamic with. “Listen, the knots aren’t the only reason I sleep with alphas, okay? I’m still an omega. I like it. It feels good to be—” Tyson gestures between them and around them, and Gabe takes it as a cue to hold him tighter, pushing his nose at his neck to scent him deeply. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“Good,” Gabe says, and: “I won’t tell,” to make Tyson laugh. He doesn’t add that he’s sorry for more than just applying for the alpha pool, for making it so that Gabe’s the one Tyson has to bond to; he’s not just sorry that Tyson has to bond. He’s sorry for wanting Tyson and for not being sorry that they had sex.

“Good,” Tyson parrots, smiling at him. “Now you know. And we did it, so.”

“We did it,” Gabe says, and he closes his eyes carrying this: he’s sorry that he didn’t just do this because he’s an alpha. He’s sorry that it’s so much more than that, and that it’s just him, Gabe, who wants Tyson because he’s Tyson. He’s sorry.

 

 

They both sleep through the night, which Gabe hadn’t fully anticipated, considering. He wakes up expecting to feel—different, but he mostly just feels hungry. A little achy. But the same as yesterday, if not quite as wound up and full of dread.

He lies in bed trying to feel around for the bond, but the way he knows Tyson’s hungry too is that he wakes up slowly next to him with a grumbling stomach and groans out, “Fuck I’m hungry. We never ate the snacks.”

“I can order breakfast,” Gabe says as Tyson starts dragging himself out from under the covers and padding to the bathroom, yawning loudly. He grunts in approval and Gabe rolls his eyes and puts an order in, then goes looking for the snacks. 

Everything Tyson got is straight up junk, too much for first thing in the morning even with his sweet tooth, so Gabe picks an orange out of the bowl of fruit the hotel put out on the counter and heads back to bed with it, lingering over a robe as he passes the closet and then putting it on and leaving it open. He needs the bathroom too but leaves Tyson to his space, trying not to worry about the space and how it might affect the bond that apparently hasn’t taken yet. Is the bathroom too far? Did he not hold Tyson tight enough? Maybe he should’ve knotted him that second time.

The way Tyson’s walking back into the room suggests that might not have been the most comfortable move to make, but as Gabe peels his orange and slides slices into his mouth, he does kind of worry. If he fucked up the bonding after all this…

“What?” Tyson asks, and Gabe shrugs, so Tyson rolls his eyes and grabs his own robe. “Whatever, weirdo. I’m starving.” He heads back out for the snacks and comes back in with an overly large bag of M&Ms and his phone.

He’s also lost the robe, which makes Gabe blink up at him a bit stupidly, something hot twitching in his belly. He tells whatever it is to fuck off and just looks at Tyson. It’s not like he’s never seen him naked before, and he’ll see him naked again many times, no matter what happens. It’s just that now whenever he sees his soft dick he’ll have to remember holding it and feeling it get hard, and that’s—whatever. Gabe eats his goddamn orange.

“I just remembered something,” Tyson says, clutching his phone and the M&Ms in one hand as he crawls back onto the bed next to Gabe. “So my phone’s blowing up.”

“Oh, god. I don’t even want to look at mine.”

“It’s mostly the group text. You know I’m supposed to send them a pic of your dick, right?”

Gabe wipes his sticky hand off on his robe and clutches the sheets protectively over his crotch, shaking his head. “No way.”

“Oh come on, I promised—”

“You are not sending my dick to the group text, Tyson.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you joined the alpha pool, Gabe.”

Gabe glares and Tyson smiles sweetly at him, before he laughs and shakes his head. “Okay, fine, I figured you wouldn’t go for it. So I have a backup plan. Take your robe off.”

“…No,” Gabe says suspiciously, eyeing Tyson from the side. 

“What, come on, do it! We’re gonna take a morning after shot—relax, just a selfie. Neck up, but we should look naked so they know.” Gabe’s still hesitant even as Tyson shifts into position next to him, settling against the mound of pillows they’d passed out in and tugging at Gabe’s robe, pulling it down far enough and rough enough that his shoulders are bared and he almost drops his orange.

“Okay, fine, stop it! Let me just take it off.”

“Good, do it,” Tyson says, and when Gabe is naked again they slide under the covers together, shoulder to shoulder. The contact is so good that Gabe barely has any room around the relief he feels from it to give one last protest as Tyson holds his phone out in front of them.

“Are you sure?”

“What, you want to tell them, like with words?” Gabe thinks about that and then sighs and leans in closer, relishing their mingled scent again, and Tyson tilts his head in so his hair brushes Gabe’s cheek. “All right, look happy.”

“I am happy!” He grins a huge, exaggerated smile and Tyson bursts out laughing seeing it in the front-facing camera view. “What!”

“You look demented.”

“ _You_ look like if a hedgehog got a perm, so relax, maybe,” but Gabe puts on a more natural smile, and then looks down at the stupid, scrunched up face Tyson’s doing for the camera and laughs at him just as he takes the picture. “Wait, do another one, I wasn’t looking.”

“Too late,” Tyson says, leaning away. Gabe tries to grab the phone and they wrestle with it, laughing, and Tyson says, “Stop it, god, you’re getting orange juice all over me,” and Gabe grabs his wrists and then—something clicks, like a lock sliding into place, something heavy and hearty settling deep in his chest. 

“Oh,” Gabe says, and Tyson’s eyes are wide as they both still, half on top of each other, phone still clutched in Tyson’s stubborn hand. “That was—”

“Congrats,” Tyson says, though his voice has lost some of its brightness. Gabe feels out for him, searching—this won’t last as the bond settles, but right now he can feel that Tyson’s nervous, a touch relieved but also jittery and antsy. Gabe can’t blame him, nor can he hold it against him when Tyson says, “Yeah, don’t do that.”

“Sorry,” Gabe says quickly, pulling back. 

“No problem. Just—”

“Yeah, I get it. I won’t.” 

Tyson takes a deep breath, then looks down at his phone. “All right. Let’s do this bitch.”

“Nice,” Gabe says, laughing again and picking up his orange again, watching Tyson send the pic.

He doesn’t check his own phone until later, when he’s showered and eaten and realized he’s going to have to put on yesterday’s clothes until he goes back to the rental and gets some. He glances over at Tyson when he thinks of this, realizing Tyson’s going to have to go with him; that’s another part of the bond that won’t last, the necessary proximity, but for right now they have to live with it. 

Tyson talks to his agent on the phone while Gabe showers, and when he gets out Tyson’s sitting in the middle of the bed. He looks exhausted and feels unhappy, though Gabe whips that back in check when Tyson gives him a stink eye. 

He doesn’t call him out on it but says, “All right, Don knows it’s done and knows it’s you now,” when Gabe heads back to the bed. He’s put the robe back on and he’s fiddling with his phone in his lap, which looks overstuffed with message notifications pinging across the screen. “He said he’s gonna take Peter out and get him wasted.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Gabe says, checking over Tyson’s face carefully. 

Tyson sighs and then puts his phone in the drawer of the bedside table, shutting it with a snap. “Okay. I’m taking a bath. Deal with your people, Gabriel.”

“Yeah, okay,” Gabe sighs out, watching Tyson go and then finally digging around the suite for his phone. 

When Gabe turns off airplane mode, he has so many notifications at once that it shuts off in his hand, and Gabe has to coax it back on again with a hard restart. As expected, most of it is the team group chat, plus dozens of individual texts from his teammates, his agent, Freddie, and Bea, all with varying levels of alarm and confusion. 

It’s overwhelming to go through all of them and he sets priorities, steeling himself and just calling Bea to get it over with. She answers before the first ring is even over, cursing him fervently in Swedish, and Gabe cringes. 

“Hey.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Bea repeats, overdoing his North American accent. “Hey Gabbe, did you finally get your phone back from the witch that stole it?”

“I’ve been busy,” Gabe says, rolling his eyes. He looks at the door to the bathroom, imagining Tyson lounging in the huge soaking tub, and then looks down at his toes on the carpet instead. “So, yeah. We did it. We bonded.”

Bea is quiet for a moment and Gabe is glad, because saying it out loud makes his chest kind of tight. She must get that with some supersonic, transcontinental twin power, because she no longer sounds like she wants to tear him limb from limb when she speaks again. “Oh, boy.”

“Pretty much,” Gabe agrees, and he’s not sure what else is there to say. 

He’ll have to think about how he tells his parents, his brother, how he’s just going to walk around and be publicly bonded to Tyson in a little while. But for now he can just listen to his sister’s soft, sort of sad sigh, the gentle way she says, “I hope you’ll be okay,” and not think about any of that. Not even about the rest of his phone, the explanations he owes people. 

“I’ll be fine,” Gabe says, and if he stays on the phone with Bea for too long, not saying much of anything, oh well. There’s no one here to hold it against him right now.

Then there’s Freddie, who also warrants a phone call, and obviously a much longer explanation since he doesn’t even know a bit of it. “Jesus Christ,” he says when Gabe gets through the first half of it. “What the fuck—this is really why we came here early?”

Gabe laughs a little, shaking his head. “Of course that’s what’s bothering you.”

“No, what’s bothering me is that you didn’t tell me anything! What is wrong with you?” 

“I couldn’t say anything to anybody,” Gabe says. “I had to be really careful. And it’s—it’s done now. We bonded. So I’m sorry I didn’t say anything but this is the situation now.”

Freddie’s silent for long enough that Gabe knows he’s in deep, deep trouble, maybe for a long time. He wishes he had more regrets. “So I can tell you’re an idiot and it’s not going to make a difference,” Freddie says after a while. 

Gabe huffs out another laugh. “Yep. Go for it.”

“You’re an _idiot_.” 

They go through that for a while, and then Gabe tells Freddie he’ll see him later—he has to get clothes and has to hug Zoey thoroughly, it’s a necessity at this point—and then looks back at the door to the bathroom. Tyson hasn’t come out yet and it’s not—it’s not too far away, and Gabe still wants to give him his space, doesn’t want to impose. That completely defeats the entire purpose of doing this. But he’s also itching to be sharing space with Tyson again, wants to know he’s okay, and has to fight that. 

He busies himself with the group text next, and it’s a shitshow he doesn’t really want to face alone, but—he hears Tyson’s snotty little voice again: _Should’ve thought of that before you joined the alpha pool, Gabe._

 __There’s dozens of texts from everyone asking if this is a joke, and then, as neither of them had answered immediately, the realization that no, it wasn’t a joke, and exactly what it looked like. Gabe scrolls through the chaos and then gingerly sends _Hey guys_ at the end of it.

Then his phone shuts off because of how many texts he gets at once again, and Gabe sighs. 

He gives as brief and perfunctory an explanation to the group text as he can, promising them that it’s real, and that it’s not going to be a big deal. The reactions are fairly predictable, and all of the solo texts are more of the same: some outrage that it was all a secret, especially from Nate and EJ; there’s Mitchy, asking them if they’re in Toronto and where they are so he can find them and kick their ass for sitting on this all summer. _Tyson didn’t know_ Gabe sends quickly, because that’s only fair. _Stay away Mitchy, we’ve got a bond to settle here._

Privately, maybe ominously, Dutchy asks Gabe if he wants to talk about this. _I can drive up when things are more stable_ , he offers, and then even if Gabe was thinking about it, he kind of ruins it with _I really don’t think you’ve thought this through._

He’s not happy, that much is clear, but Gabe never thought he would be. He thinks he can hear Tyson’s phone going off in the drawer and that’s probably Nate, expressing the same sentiment but about Gabe, and Gabe can’t blame him. 

Tyson’s _still_ in the bath, and it’s been long enough now that Gabe doesn’t think it’s unreasonable to knock on the door and call in. “Hey,” Gabe says gently, leaning against the door. “Did you drown in there?” 

“Ha ha,” Tyson says, sounding perfectly alive and undrowned and okay. “I’m fine. You can come in.”

Gabe thinks about declining—maybe he should, maybe he’s supposed to—but finds he doesn’t have it in him yet; maybe he needs to eat another orange. 

He lets himself into the bathroom and finds Tyson still in the tub, head tipped all the way back and bubbles fading, an empty champagne flute next to a bottle on its side on the ledge next to him. Leave it to Tyson to find booze in a bathroom. 

“You look like you just got back from the Grammys,” Gabe says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re okay?”

“I’m not crashing,” Tyson says, which makes Gabe start a little. “I mean—it was good last night. It’s nothing like that.”

“Good,” Gabe says slowly. “I mean, I’m glad.”

“I was just thinking,” Tyson says, skimming his hand over the top of the water, shaking suds off his palm. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tyson says. “I don’t think we should have sex again.”

“Oh,” Gabe says, blinking. “Okay. I mean, of course, if you don’t want to—”

“It’s not really about that.” Tyson tilts his head up to look at him, and Gabe doesn’t think this should be a conversation they have while one of them is mildly drunk and sitting in a lukewarm bath, but he’s not about to make any real arguments here. Not even to demand to know if Tyson _wants_ to have sex with him again. “It’s just—if we have sex, and we’re bonded, and if we have to live together when we get back to Denver—that’s a relationship. That’s like, real.”

“Right. And we don’t want that.”

“I don’t. That’s not what I wanted out of this, you know that. So I just want to be upfront with you, because it’s you.” Tyson frowns. “Is that okay? I mean, it’s a little late if it’s not okay, and maybe none of this matters anyway because they might just trade me or you or both of us anyway, but—”

“Of course it’s okay, Tyson,” Gabe says, and he drags the little bench with all the towels on it over to the bath and pushes the towels off the sit on it. “I didn’t get into this for a relationship either. I told you, we’ll have that arrangement you were talking about. Everything’s going to be normal, or as normal as it can be.” 

“Okay,” Tyson says, and he looks relieved. It’s such a huge rush of a feeling that Gabe winds up picking up on it without trying; he hopes Tyson can feel his guilt in turn, how awful he feels that Tyson was worried about this.

“I don’t think the boys could handle it if we were in a real relationship,” Gabe says, pulling his phone out and showing the mess of notifications still coming. “It’s pretty much a circus in there right now. I might have to figure out how to delete iMessage from my phone.” 

“Oh, god,” Tyson groans, closing his eyes. “I don’t want to hear it. Has Dutch left his fainting couch since he found out?”

“He wants to come here and ‘talk’” Gabe says, rolling his eyes. “So I propose we get the fuck out of Ontario as soon as that arbitration hearing is done.” 

Tyson gives him a small smile. “Yeah? Not a bad idea.” Gabe smiles back and any tension lingering in the bathroom kind of evaporates with the last of Tyson’s bubbles. He looks down and gives a forlorn sort of sigh. “I’m a prune.”

“You’ve been in there a while.”

“I’m not totally sure I can stand up on my own. I didn’t have anything to mix the champagne with.” 

“Champagne drunk at a Four Seasons when it’s still morning? Why am I not surprised?” 

“Hey!” Tyson says, laughing and reddening. “It’s my birthday, give me a break!”

“Happy birthday,” Gabe says again, laughing and helping Tyson get out of the bath. 

 

 

The time between settling the bond and the arbitration hearing feels like a kind of limbo. Tyson and Gabe have to spend every waking and sleeping moment together, first in the hotel, then in the rental with Freddie when he makes Gabe too guilty about abandoning his dog and tells them, “I don’t care about your stupid bond, just don’t have sex when I’m home.”

“Don’t have sex with _Gabe_ when you’re home, or don’t have sex with anybody?” Tyson asks, and Freddie stares at him like he’s grown an extra head and then looks at Gabe helplessly. 

“Is he for real?”

“He’s kidding,” Gabe says hastily. “I mean—sort of kidding. It’s complicated. Can we talk about this later?”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Freddie says but they wind up texting about it, the only way they can really have a conversation without Tyson involved because they can barely be more than a few rooms away from each other in those first few days. 

They sleep in the same bed at night, fighting over the covers until Gabe just gets Tyson his own set of blankets because he likes to keep the room cold while he sleeps. In the daytime, the three of them train together, avoid any GTA teammates lurking around, and mostly try to ignore the bond or the upcoming arbitration hearing.

Gabe knows very little about how the hearing is going to work, besides testing the bond. He’s pretty sure that’s the only part he’ll have to be around for. Tyson mentioned his agent talking to Sakic in the days leading up to the hearing but nothing can be finalized until the bond is proven, and it doesn’t sound like they’re super close anyway. 

“I really don’t want to get traded,” Tyson tells him at night, when it’s dark in the room except for the city lights fighting through the curtains. They’re curled up in different blanket sets and still lying side to side, skin on skin no longer necessary, and Gabe thinks the proximity isn’t going to be long for the world, either. He kind of wishes that weren’t true, that he could hold Tyson close and tell the team that this is what they need for the foreseeable future, but bonds don’t work that way. 

“Me neither,” Gabe says, and Tyson nudges him companionably in the side.

“I was, I mean. I’ve been looking at a house, in Wash Park.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of old so it’ll need a lot of work—if I even buy it, I don’t know, I’m not doing anything unless the contract gets figured out—but I think it looks cool. Nate’s been looking at something close by, so. It could be good, if that’s where we lived.” He shrugs; neither of them are looking at each other, too dark to make out faces, but Gabe presses a tiny bit closer. 

“It sounds great,” Gabe says, and Tyson laughs. 

“I didn’t tell you anything about it, come on.”

“Close to Nate, that’s all I needed to hear.” Nate, who’s barely speaking to either of them and still seems like a risk to appear in Toronto and accost them at any moment, forcing them to answer for their transgressions. Gabe misses him, stupidly, and hopes that Nate doesn’t hate him. 

“I can show you,” Tysons says, and that’s how they stay up late looking at pictures of the listing on Tyson’s iPad, talking about what Tyson wants to do to the house. “I mean,” Tyson says at one point, looking uncertain. “Do you like that kind of thing? We don’t have to do subway tiles if you don’t want,” and Gabe’s heart feels full. 

“I like subway tiles,” Gabe says gently, but he wrinkles his nose at the next Instagram shot Tyson shows him for inspiration. “Okay, that’s way too much white, though.”

“White is classy, Gabe.”

“It’s boring, and not practical with a dog.” 

“Zoey can’t even tell what’s white and what isn’t, she’s colorblind!” 

And when they’re both tired the next day, blinking and sluggish over the good for training but not necessarily for eating breakfast, Freddie makes a disgusted face at them. 

“Ugh. I _told_ you, don’t have sex while I’m—”

“We didn’t have sex,” Gabe says tiredly at the same time Tyson says, “Relax, it’s not like you heard anything. Gabe gagged me.” 

Freddie lets out a strangled groan and gets up, muttering in Swedish to Zoey, who follows after him dutifully. Tyson is left smiling a small, victorious smile into his food while Gabe stares at him in disbelief and frustration. 

“Why do you antagonize him?”

“Because he makes it real easy,” Tyson says without missing a beat, pulling the rest of Freddie’s steel cut oats across the table and helping himself. “Oh gross, no wonder he’s cranky, who eats this!” 

Even if it’s limbo, it’s enough time to develop something of a routine, and Gabe hopes this is a preview of how being bonded is going to work once they’re back in Denver and living their normal lives. There won’t be as much touching—even that’s starting not to be necessary, though Gabe makes a point to put his arm around Tyson’s shoulders at least once a day, and Tyson steals any shirt he leaves lying around for long, so it’s not exactly a one-sided impulse—and not as much forced togetherness, but it might be pleasant. It doesn’t have to be the shitshow everyone seems to think it will be, if the group text is anything to go by.

Before they can get to that, though, they have to get through the arbitration process. In a perfect world, there would be a contract decided on in principle already, and there’d be no need for a full arbiter, just a bond tester. 

But that’s not the case for Tyson, and Gabe tries not to worry or pressure Tyson with questions about it. Tyson and his agent have every right to get as much out of the team as possible, especially after what they’ve put him through, and Gabe doesn’t hold the ongoing negotiations against them at all. He knows Tyson wants to stay. He wants Tyson to stay. 

Still, it’s just one of the issues that has his stomach in knots the morning of the hearing. Tyson is all false cheer and bravado, cracking dirty jokes like the rent is due and he’s paying in self-deprecation, and Gabe knows he’s way more anxious about this than he lets on, but he leaves him to cope how he usually does. He tries to just provide solid, quiet support for Tyson as they drive in to the offices to meet their agents.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he says as they’re unbuckling their seatbelts and smoothing out the stiff creases in their pants; Freddie had insisted on ironing for them, not liking the job the dry cleaner did apparently. Tyson was delighted so Gabe let it be, but he thinks he probably needs to talk to Freddie before they leave about feeling left out of their weird little situation. 

Tyson snorts. “Sure it is. I just have to go in there and hear about how worthless I am to the team that just forced me to bond with someone. It’s going to be really fun actually.”

“I mean—you have a good case. You’re an amazing, valuable player and everyone involved knows that. And you played ball, you bonded. So they have nothing they can use against you.” It all sounds logical and settled as Gabe says it, but he has to ignore the uncertainty in his gut as he does, the way he still doesn’t quite trust his team and how horrible that feels. 

“Oh, they’ll find something,” Tyson says, chuckling bitterly. “Whatever. Let’s get your part over with so I can suffer in peace.”

“I’m not gonna leave after the test,” Gabe says as they start heading into the building, looking around the lobby for their agents. They’re both on their phones on a small couch by reception, ignoring each other, and Gabe and Tyson head over to them. “I mean, I want to stay and be here for you.”

“I really don’t think you have to,” Tyson says, wrinkling his nose. “I think the bond’ll let you get out for a bit. It hasn’t been that bad lately.” 

It’s true; they’d done something of a test at High Park, where Tyson threw a tennis ball as far as he could and Gabe and Zoey ran for it. Zoey beat Gabe out, of course, and ran back to Tyson, but Gabe kept going until he felt a twinge of discomfort from the separation, nothing debilitating like they were warned against for the early days, but something missing still. He’s sure even that will fade with time, but for now—

“That’s okay,” Gabe says, shrugging. “I just want to stay as your teammate.” He remembers himself, then, stopping them before they’re in earshot of the agents, touching Tyson’s arm gently. “I mean, if you’re okay with that. I’ll leave if you’re more comfortable.”

Tyson kind of groans, shaking his head up at the ceiling. “Whatever, man. You gotta stop being so nice to me, it’s really weird. If you want to stay, stay. I’m not gonna be mad either way.”

“Okay,” Gabe says, deciding that’s probably as much as he’s going to get at this point. He’ll count it as their first win of the day.

The second win is the bond test, which they apparently pass with flying colors. Travis pops in with a woman in a lab coat, smiles at them all friendly and companionable the way he always does, then stands around while the lab coat woman has them sit on the same large exam table and checks both their heartbeats at the same time with a complicated dual stethoscope Gabe’s only ever seen pictures of. 

“Shh,” she says when Tyson snickers at it. “Let me listen.” 

They both remain dutifully quiet as she listens, then scribbles something down with a small, soft smile. “Excellent,” she says. “Very strong. Do me a favor, turn around so you’re back to back but not touching. Then hold your breath and let it out when it feels right.”

Gabe turns in the direction that means he can see Travis beaming his very fake, very friendly smile at them, and if the breath he lets out is a little huffy as a result, oh well. It’s released at the exact some time as Tyson’s, perfectly in sync, and the woman gives a happy sort of exclamation and jots down more of her findings. “I’m very impressed,” she says. “Travis filled me in on the situation. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this bond has been in the works for years. You might be soulmates.”

“Give me a break,” Tyson says, and Gabe can’t help agreeing, even if he tries to be more polite about it. Everyone knows soulmates aren’t real so it’s a little frustrating to hear what appears to be the NHL’s chief bond tester throwing out such an outdated, outlandish comment, but whatever. 

After a few more tests, she gives them high marks for their stable, very strong bond and that’s all that matters in the end. It’s all Tyson needs to step into his arbitration hearing with everything in order, the self-righteous high ground that he’d followed all the rules to the bitter end. It’s official and will be a matter of public record soon, so Gabe spends the time waiting in the lobby for Tyson’s hearing to end making sure he’s told everyone that needs to hear it from him personally. He thinks he’s got everyone.

He realizes he’s incorrect when he gets an all caps text from Factor that just reads _WHAT. THE. FUCK._

 __It’s out, then, and Gabe sighs and closes his eyes. Factor can wait. There are more important things.

With the bond test out of the way, and the truth of it out in the public, the rest of the arbitration process plays out in a perfectly routine way, which means it’s fairly awful and humiliating and draining. Tyson’s tightlipped and unhappy on his breaks from it, ignoring calls from his dad through meals with Gabe and trying to ignore everything the media says about them, which is an endeavor Gabe can appreciate as he tries it, too. 

He has to give a statement through Peter and they work on that with Tyson and Don, getting the story straight: they’ve bonded as teammates in an official capacity and nothing else beyond that. The nature of their relationship hasn’t changed and they would appreciate that everyone respect their privacy. 

_Fuck your privacy_ Factor texts him. _Where are you staying you moron!_

 _I don’t have time for this_ Gabe sends back, even if now they’re stuck in a waiting period while the arbiter deliberates for a few days. They’re going to a Lumineers concert tonight; Gabe kind of has nothing but time on his hands, but he really doesn’t want to deal with Factor butting his bossy, furry face in. _I told you what happened and why, fuck off._

The problem is that Factor figures out they’re seeing The Lumineers and he winds up confronting them at the show, because that’s the kind of thing Factor thinks is acceptable. “What the fuck,” he says instead of “hello” or “how are you doing” or “want to hit up a Tim Hortons with me?” 

“For god’s sake, take a hint Ryan,” Gabe says, but Tyson seems happy to see him so it’s whatever. They wind up at a bar together after the show, and then at a Second Cup when Tyson claims he has to be sober for the morning for when his life is “undoubtedly ruined”.

“So you’re still a drama queen,” Factor says. “Alpha Gabe hasn’t stamped that out of you yet, good.”

“Will you give it a rest?” Gabe says, angrily crumbling a dry muffin up instead of eating it. “I’m trying to help, I don’t know why you can’t get that.”

“I’m just trying to go over the facts again,” Factor tells him. He has latte foam in his beard. “So you went to the team to arrange this first, even though you knew Tyson didn’t want you to—”

“I just love it when people talk about me like I’m not sitting here,” Tyson says, sighing dreamily. Factor ignores him, making his point.

“—and when they told you to kick rocks, you decided to just arrange it all on your own and not tell anybody? That was your help?”

“I’m not saying it was the most—transparent way of doing things, no,” Gabe says. “But it’s how it had to happen. And I’ve already said I’m sorry, so maybe you can get off my back.”

“Nope, sorry,” Factor says, shaking his head. “This is still fucked up. Tyson didn’t even get a say until—”

“Tyson is right here,” Tyson bursts out, finally shutting Factor up. “For fuck’s _sake_ , I am so sick of alphas talking over me like nothing I say matters. Gabe and I talked about this. It wasn’t cool, but I get why he did it, and we’re going to try to keep things normal and easy. Seriously, this is the least of my fucking problems right now, so can you drop it?”

“Have you thought about what this means long-term?” Factor asks. “Like, you don’t want kids, and Gabe does—”

“Who says I want kids?” Gabe asks, and Factor rolls his eyes. 

“Seriously, have you thought about how long you’ll have to be bonded and putting off starting a family? Like, starting your lives?”

Gabe wants to strangle him a little, but he leaves it to Tyson and it’s a wise choice. “Have you thought about how much you fucking sound like Dutchy right now?”

Factor actually flinches, leaning back in his seat. “Wow. Harsh.”

“I’m sorry I had to go there, but it needed to be said,” Tyson says, and Gabe nods gravely. 

Of course none of this is stuff Gabe hasn’t thought about, and he knows it’s all on Tyson’s mind too. At some point, eventually, maybe they will have to talk about it, just the two of them, if it ever gets to be a problem that they’ll have to put all that off. Gabe doesn’t even know if it will be yet. Right now he’s just wanted to solve the problem of Tyson getting bonded, and he’s not quite ready to worry about what that means for himself yet. There are more important things to worry about. 

And of course Factor wants to bully his way in and shove it all on the surface; that’s always how he is, partly because he takes responsibility about as seriously as Gabe does and partly because he likes the drama of it all as much as Tyson does. None of this is surprising coming from him; it’s why Gabe avoided involving him at all. 

What is surprising is later, when they’re headed back to the rental in the same Uber, having declared an uneasy peace in promises to abstain from calling each other Dutchy-adjacent. Tyson gets out first and heads up to the rental and Gabe goes to follow, but Factor catches his sleeve and says, “Hey.”

“What,” Gabe says, but he softens up at the serious look Factor is giving him. 

“I’m not trying to come after you, okay?” Factor says. “I just know how stubborn you get when you think something is right. I know that you meant to help him, but I need you to keep asking yourself _how_ you’re helping him. Like, ask that every day. It’ll be good for both of you.”

“Okay,” Gabe tells him, no more malice or resentment in his voice. It’s not bad advice, even if it sounds pretentious because it’s coming from Factor. “I can do that.”

“Good. I know where you live now.”

“Oh, that’s comforting.”

When he gets upstairs, Tyson is spreading Gabe’s set of blankets out on the pullout couch, fluffing up pillows and drinking wine because of course his sober directive was bullshit. “I think we should try separate beds tonight,” he says, and Gabe nods in quiet agreement, knowing it can’t hurt. This will be their reality going forward, and it’s one that Gabe knows he can live with, will have to live with; anything else can be figured out in the future. He’s hoping that they have the time together to do it, and that’s the more pressing issue now.

Maybe it’s a pressing enough issue that it brings Tyson out of the bedroom that night, waking Gabe as he crawls onto the sofa bed mattress and tugs his blankets out to share. “One more night,” he whispers as Gabe blinks awake and nods and puts his arm around Tyson, pulling him close so the blanket thing isn’t really an issue. 

The next day, Tyson hears from his agent about the arbitration ruling, doesn’t tell Gabe any of the details of it, takes another long bath with the rest of the wine from the night before, and then comes out of the bathroom with his phone in his hand. “We’re settling,” Tyson says with a grim but also relieved smile. “Four years. I just have to go and sign it.”

Gabe can’t help the happy yell he lets out, hugging Tyson tight. Tyson hugs him back, their mingled scent overwhelming for a moment—the smell of their bond, which Tyson always says smells like Christmas. “Sign it,” Gabe says a little breathlessly. “And then buy the old house in Wash Park. And then—”

“Yeah,” Tyson says, laughing a little, tucking his face briefly into Gabe’s neck. He leans back and the smile he has on his face is the truest, most genuine one Gabe has seen from him since the dinner before they bonded, and it’s such a relief to see. He can’t even feel it anymore, that part already faded, but it’s enough to see it; better, maybe. 

It’s normal to see Tyson happy and appreciate it, and normal is what Gabe promised him. Normal can be what they strive for next, blocking out all the noise and whatever people want to say about them. The bond is set, the contract is done, and they have something of a future together, even if it’s not _together_ , and even if it’s not completely certain. Gabe can live with that and he thinks that by the look on his face, Tyson can too. 

 

 

The same day Tyson puts in an offer for the house, Patty quits as coach of the Avalanche and leaves the organization entirely. “Well,” Tyson says when their phones blow up and they both kind of panic for a minute. “That’s better than getting traded, right?” 

“It really, really is,” Gabe tells him. He laughs, hard and deep from his gut, and doesn’t stop for a while, long enough that Tyson joins him. It feels good. 

 

 

_Fall-Winter 2016_

__Things move quickly, and before Gabe knows it the old house that Tyson bought is move-in ready in time for Halloween. They’re still unpacking when they give out candy; they’d drawn whiskers on each other’s faces and picked up cat ears at Target and they have two overflowing bowls of full bars to give out, plus a secret stash of minis Gabe picked up for when Tyson inevitably gets jealous of the children and tries to cut them off before dark and keep the rest of the candy for himself. He’s got this.

The Avs season so far has been a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar—they’re their usual inconsistent selves, trying to reach .500 hockey with the tips of their fingers and mostly coming up short up to this point. 

There are a ton of new faces, which Gabe had been expecting, but they seem to be handling their record better than most of the old faces, who seem sick of this by now. Gabe doesn’t really blame them, but what he does blame them for is attributing any of this to Gabe, Tyson, and their bond. 

It’s possible Tyson doesn’t help matters when he says, at the first welcome back dinner they all attend together, “Oh come on. Some players get their coaches fired; we made our coach quit in a fiery rage. That’s kind of impressive, right? Who’s done _that_?” and only a few people really find it funny. 

Gabe can’t really believe there are tons of Patty supporters left, not with how things ended between him and the players last season and not with how he treated Dutchy especially, but Dutchy is apparently one of them or at least claims to be.

“He’s mad we’re not making babies,” Tyson says when they talk about it on EJ’s porch, watching the last of summer fade from his grass as the sun goes down. He’d stolen Gabe’s hoodie without saying a word, ignoring EJ’s raised eyebrow, and he looks relaxed and comfortable in a way Gabe can appreciate. “It’s not about Patty, it’s the baby thing. He’s insulted we’re not taking the bond seriously.” 

For how awkward it had been when they first got in and had to face their teammates about the bond, EJ’s been the first to cut Gabe some slack and say that this is probably the best possible outcome they could’ve hoped for. He’s been warmer than Nate, who still just seems hurt he wasn’t let it on this at all even if Gabe’s explained why a hundred times. 

“He really needs to get over it,” Gabe says, and EJ rolls his eyes.

“It’s literally been years. He’s not going to get over it, he’s not going to change how he is. We just have to live with it.” He shrugs. “It’s not like he’s the only one, you know.”

“I know,” Gabe sighs, tipping his head back in his deck chair and closing his eyes. He’d done all of this mostly to keep the team together, to make a point to management that you couldn’t pick on one of them without picking on the rest. But in the early dawn of the post-Roy era, most of the fight of it has gone out of the situation. Their front office check-in had been done together, short and to the point. “You wanna test the bond?” Tyson asked, flexing an arm. “It’s very strong, we think it can bench 300.”

There really wasn’t much more to it than that. Their sex life was never even brought up; they asked Tyson about his birth control, which Gabe has accepted is just never going to not be a thing they ask about, and that was the extent of it. It was almost nice, in a way, if he ignored all they had to go through to get to this spot.

It’s the locker room that’s the problem, older guys who don’t approve of what they’re doing and how defiant they’re being about it. “There’s a reason these arrangements were always kept quiet in the past,” Iggy tells them, a little cold. 

Gabe knows he’s smarting from losing his A, that as much as people say that doesn’t mean all that much to them, it still stings to lose it. Gabe had nothing to do with those decisions, though, so he has little time for people holding it against him. He did what he had to do this summer. Jared Bednar isn’t his fault.

In the new house, in separate bedrooms but fairly mingled lives, Gabe and Tyson settle and work towards normal as best they can. It’s not easy with—everyone, and the way they’re playing, but it’s all they can do. 

“Why do they get full bars and I get the little ones?” Tyson asks when Gabe presents him with the backup candy on Halloween, each of them standing at the kitchen island to pick through for their favorites. “Why doesn’t your bondmate get priority over some jerk neighbor kids, huh?”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Gabe asks incredulously. He wishes so much that he didn’t find Tyson’s ridiculousness so endearing. It would make keeping things normal so much easier. “You’re a lunatic. Eat your mini Snickers and stop complaining.”

“Yes alpha,” Tyson says, and then he ducks, laughing, when Gabe starts pelting him with Skittles. “Okay, relax, stop that! You’re a child! They’re getting everywhere!” 

The bond is good, Gabe has come to realize as November shuffles in and things start to go from bad to worse for the team. It’s not hurting either of them, it’s got the league and management off Tyson’s back, and the important guys at least understand it. In a way, the bond has let him know who he can trust on his team and who he really can’t, who is never going to see eye to eye with him about dynamics. At least he knows now. 

There’s some stuff they have to navigate with each other, of course, like the first time Nate pulls up in front of their house before practice. Gabe is standing in the kitchen, blinking himself awake over a cup of coffee, and he hears Nate’s car roll up the driveway and looks out curiously.

“Did we make plans with him that I forgot?” he asks as Tyson hops down the stairs in his socks, zipping his hoodie up as he goes. He freezes and looks guiltily between Gabe and Nate outside, then groans.

“No, fuck. I forgot.”

“What’d you forget?”

“We—we like to carpool to practice,” Tyson says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “He was kind of pissed we hadn’t done it in a while, since we’ve been back basically, so I told him we could today.” 

Gabe nods, processing all that well enough, but Tyson still looks like Gabe just caught him with his hand in the candy jar, cautious and a little pensive. “Okay? What’s the problem? As long as he doesn’t mind dropping Zoey off at daycare, I’m fine with it. Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

“That’s the thing,” Tyson says, cringing a little. “I said it could be just the two of us.”

“…okay,” Gabe says slowly, frowning. “I mean—we live in the same house—”

“Yeah but it’s just—we haven’t hung out just the two of us in a while, and we did this literally all the time so I thought it would be good to get into that again, you know?” Tyson really does look apologetic, but he’s also glancing towards the driveway worriedly, and Gabe sighs. 

“Of course. I get it.” He’d never want to get in the way of Tyson and Nate’s friendship—it’s way too important, he knows that—but, well. Nate’s his friend too. He knows Tyson and Nate are best friends and that’s different but he can’t help but think of how distant Nate’s been with him, how slowly he’s come around on the bond even if he’s also acknowledged it was probably the right move considering all the options.

There are some locker room issues Gabe can live with; he truly doesn’t give a shit at this stage in his career if Francois Beauchemin disapproves of his lifestyle, he just really can’t. But Nate’s important. Fixing this with Nate is important, and Gabe knows he’s going to have to work on that as soon as possible. 

It’s important for a young guy like Mikko to see, to know that they’re a team and they’re friends and they can get past issues with each other, that that’s the kind of captain Gabe is. His work isn’t finished with the bond, even if that part’s settled now.

So Gabe leaves Tyson and Nate to their carpool and leaves from the same fucking house five minutes later than them as a rule, or five minutes earlier if he has to drop off Zoey. It feels pretty stupid—he and Tyson had been taking turns driving each other and _they_ had developed something of a routine, and goddamnit he might actually be jealous of Nate, which is probably the most ridiculous feeling he’s ever had in his life—but it also feels necessary, so Gabe doesn’t press it.

In the meantime, Gabe starts thinking about how to get Nate alone outside of hockey, realizing they haven’t hung out just the two of them since last season. He decides that that’s his excuse; he gets EJ and Picks to occupy Tyson one night and then invites himself over to Nate’s new place to have dinner. 

Nate’s like, “Whatever,” and he doesn’t lock Gabe out or anything, though he laughs when Gabe offers to cook him something. “My parents were just here,” Nate tells him, which means lasagna’s thawing in a pan on Nate’s brand new granite countertops. 

Gabe had been invited to Nate’s housewarming, of course, so he’s been here before, but he wanders around the house anyway, commenting on decorating choices Nate had nothing to do with. Nate humors him for a while, but when they sit down to eat and Gabe’s jabbering away about floorboard heating, Nate finally loses his patience.

“All right, can you maybe stop talking about my house and tell me what you want to talk about?” His mouth twists into a humorless smile. “What are you, cooking up another plan I’m not allowed in on?”

“Nate,” Gabe says sadly, frowning at his ducked head. “Okay, yeah, that’s what I want to talk about. What do I have to do to get you to forgive me?” 

“If I have to tell you, it doesn’t count,” Nate says snottily, but he rolls his eyes at the unamused look Gabe gives him and shrugs. “Fine. I forgive you for that, at least. I do understand why you couldn’t tell me, even if it fucking sucks.”

“So?” Gabe prods, and Nate tries to play dumb. 

“So what?”

“ _Nate_ ,” Gabe says again, and Nate sighs noisily. 

“Okay.” Nate looks down at the table for a bit, clearly trying to gather his thoughts up. “I guess I’m kind of on Factor’s side here.”

“Oh, god.”

“No, I mean—not the kid stuff, though I totally don’t buy that it doesn’t bother you or won’t bother you down the line, but whatever. It’s not just that.” Nate keeps looking at the table and Gabe waits him out, knowing whatever’s next is worth it, because Nate doesn’t just say things. “I guess it’s—why did you do this?”

“Because I didn’t see any other way to help Tyson,” Gabe says promptly, truthfully. 

Nate nods slowly, but finally looks at him, clear, stubborn blue eyes peering directly at Gabe and kind of pinning him. “That’s it?”

“It’s not—look, I know Tyson thinks it’s all alpha dogma knocked into my head, and Factor probably too, just because I know they kind of buy into that stuff sometimes, when they feel like it. But you know I’m not like that. I’m not just trying to save him because he’s some helpless omega or anything like that. I know he’s not. It was just—the right thing to do.” He winces, still thinking back on some of it. “Even if I had to go about it in an uncool way.”

“Okay, yeah,” Nate says, shaking his head. “I know all that, I get it. I really don’t give a shit about the alpha stuff either. I’m—” He hesitates only for a moment before blustering on. “I’m kind of seeing an alpha right now, so. I’m not exactly a traditional kind of guy here.”

“You’re—what?” Gabe says, surprise and a certain kind of pride lighting up his voice. “Nate, seriously? That’s—”

“It’s private, right now,” Nate tells him firmly, and Gabe puts his hands up in agreement, nodding in understanding. “She’s cool with it but you know not everyone will be, so we’re keeping it quiet. But I’m just saying—I don’t buy into that stuff like Ryan and Tyson do. I literally don’t care who’s an alpha or an omega or a beta except when this stupid league tells me I have to care because they’re going to ruin my best friend’s life over it.”

“So what are you asking me, then?” Gabe asks, leaning over the table intently. “Why else would I do this?”

“Because you’re fucking crazy about him?” Nate says, so forcefully Gabe feels stung with shock. “And like, I know you, I know you’re a good person, and I don’t want to think this stuff about you—but now you’ve got him all to yourself and I guess I’m wondering how that’s not as bad as some other rando he picked out of a hat.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gabe breathes out. “You think I’m—what, taking advantage?”

“I think you won’t even admit to yourself why you did this, so all this ‘arrangement’ and ‘normal’ bullshit isn’t going to last unless you figure that out,” Nate says. “Maybe not even then. I mean, it’s been pretty obvious for a while that you’re so fucking into him. I don’t think he gets it but Factor and EJ and—”

“So you think I’m just following my dick here,” Gabe says, starting to feel a little sick. “You think—”

“I _know_ you have feelings for him,” Nate says, and Gabe flinches from the stark, uncomfortable truth of it, sticking in his throat. “Nothing to do with your dick. But I know this isn’t just doing the right thing or being a good captain; it’s way more than that. And that fucking sucks, Gabe, because Tyson’s not even thinking that way. He’s not even thinking about thinking that way. And—” Nate swallows hard, ducking his head again. “He’s my best friend but you’re my friend too and I don’t want to see either of you get fucked up. That’s all.” 

“Oh man, Nate,” Gabe says. Nate looks so young across the table from him, shoulders hunched and mouth set defiantly. This season has been hard on them all already, and it only looks to get harder unless they find some way to course correct soon, but Gabe tries not to forget about the expectations set on Nate more than anyone and how deeply he feels basically everything: disappointment and pride and love and anger, all at once sometimes.

All of that seems piled on Nate right now and he’s just a kid, smarter than his own good and maybe growing up faster than he’s had to before now. Gabe feels awful, and he loves him a lot. “Listen. You’re—you’re totally right.”

“Yay,” Nate says dryly, a small, sad smile on his face as he looks up again. 

“I do have feelings for Tyson,” Gabe says, even if saying it out loud seems terrifying and surreal as the words leave his tongue. “But I swear to you—that’s not why I did this. I mean, maybe I wouldn’t have gone this far, maybe I’d have given up or—I don’t know, maybe it was a factor. But it’s not—I didn’t bond with Tyson so he would have to be with me. I _promise_. I wouldn’t do that.”

Nate studies his face carefully, then nods slowly. “Okay. I mean, I didn’t _really_ think you’d do that, but like—people do insane, shitty things when they’re in love. And that’s—it’s still a problem, you know? Even if he feels the same way—which, I’m not saying he does or doesn’t, I honestly don’t think he lets himself think about things like that—”

“I know,” Gabe cuts in, clearing the lump of relief in his throat from Nate’s honest belief in him. It means a lot and he doesn’t know how to say that; he’s just going to have to hug Nate really hard when they’re done here. “We did talk about it. We’re not doing anything like that, so it’s all—it doesn’t matter.”

“It does, though,” Nate tells him, a little gentle. “It’s kind of like the kid thing. You keep saying it’s not a problem now, but you’re still in hero mode. It’s going to be when it gets to be too much.”

“Yeah but—the way it happened, and knowing what he wants, I’m never going to tell him or try to make a move like that,” Gabe says, shrugging. “I’m just not. So it really doesn’t matter.”

“That’s really fucking sad, Jesus,” Nate says. 

Gabe shrugs again. “It is what it is.”

“That’s even _sadder_ , oh my god.”

“Feels like that’s my first tattoo after all this, right?” They both laugh, bitter and kind of unhappy, and Gabe knows they’re both thinking about the shitshow this season already is.

Nate pokes at his food, then sighs and puts his fork down. “The lasagna’s cold already.”

“It’s been kind of just sitting here, yeah.” 

“I’ll heat it up,” Nate says, and he picks up both of their plates and heads to his fancy new microwave in his fancy new house he bought with his fancy new grownup contract at 21 years old, and Gabe gets up and hugs him from the side while they’re waiting for the food to heat up again. 

And before their next practice, when Nate pulls up out front and Tyson heads out and Gabe stands in the kitchen drinking his coffee like usual, he hears Nate leaning on the horn for a minute before Gabe steps out onto the front porch and frowns at them. “What?”

“C’mon loser, we’ve got practice,” Nate calls, leaning over towards the open passenger side window. Tyson beams at him, giving him two thumbs up, and Gabe grins big. 

“Yeah, okay. Give me five minutes.”

“Hurry up, Gabriel,” Tyson yells, grinning back. 

“Yeah!” Nate says, and Gabe scrambles back inside to finish getting ready. 

 

 

When there were locker room problems in the past, Gabe always took an active role in trying to work them out, even before he was captain. Even now, he still makes it a point to treat everyone with respect and kindness, sometimes pointedly so, and he makes it clear he expects that in return, no matter what’s happening on the ice. Most of the guys can handle that—Dutchy really, truly pretends there’s nothing wrong, his go-to—so on the surface it’s kind of working.

But things are tense. Gabe doesn’t really know how long they can last like this, and as November ages poorly and their record goes further down the toilet, trade rumors start bubbling up, so maybe he’s not the only one who’s wondering about that. 

There’s nothing from Joe or his agent, nothing but the media talking, so Gabe does his talking back, repeating the same lines about working hard and concentrating on his game and leading the team. He wants to lead the team, he reiterates. He wants to stay. 

The main issue as he sees it is that he doesn’t see any way to bridge the personal gap that’s dividing the room somewhat, and hockey isn’t exactly inspiring anyone or bringing them together. Mutterings about their calm, patient beta of a new coach suggest there’s some resentment there, too, but it’s nothing Gabe can fix. He knows he’s not having the best season but no one really is no matter what they try, so it’s easy to feel helpless.

“What a job we did here,” Tyson tells him the morning after another loss. He’d gone out after the game and didn’t come back until late, went right in the shower or so Gabe heard from where he was in his own bed and trying to force himself asleep; when he did fall asleep, he dreamt about the game, marginally better than dreaming about where Tyson was. 

“Ha ha,” Gabe says flatly. He’s dicking around with the complicated toaster Tyson picked up last week, using the fancy little wooden tongs to try and pull his bagel out of the too-big slots and cursing when he loses the tongs in there. “Dammit. What did you do with the old toaster?”

“Gave it to Mikko,” Tyson says, taking a large, crunching bite of an apple. He’s reading something on his phone; nothing good by the look on his face. “You know why we suck, right?” 

Gabe starts rooting around in the junk drawer that had seemingly popped up overnight in their kitchen, crowing triumphantly when he comes up with a pair of chopsticks. With painstaking concentration, he starts trying to pry the tongs out of the toaster with the chopsticks. “Why do we suck, Tyson?”

“Because I’m not fulfilling my omega duties and you’re obviously frustrated,” Tyson says through a mouthful of apple. “You need to get laid. That’s the whole reason.”

“I thought that might be it,” Gabe says, and then he lets out a shout of happiness as the tongs come free and take his bagel with them. “Yes! Fuck yeah!”

“Way to go, Landy,” Tyson tells him, hooting when Gabe spins around punching the air. “You did it. Season saved.”

“I knew I could do it,” Gabe says, spreading peanut butter and honey over his bagel and eating it standing at the counter, grinning smugly at Tyson. “I believed in myself all along.”

“I believed in you too, buddy,” Tyson says, grinning back. He finishes off his apple and stretches in his seat at the counter, letting his phone drop on the granite and yawning. “You could stand to get laid, though.”

“What?” Gabe asks, his turn to speak with his mouth full. Tyson smiles at him.

“I mean—the arrangement, right? It goes both ways. I assumed you knew that but you’re kind of not—I’m the only one taking advantage of it right now, so I just wanted to make sure.”

“Oh yeah,” Gabe says, forced nonchalance painting his voice. It feels like there’s too much peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth all of a sudden, and he clears his throat. “I mean, I know. I get it.”

“Okay, good.”

“I’ve just been busy,” and Tyson snorts out a startled laugh.

“All right, man.”

“I have been!” Gabe says hotly, feeling his face start to go red. “It’s not a big deal, I’ve just been—we’ve had hockey, and—”

“And hockey, and that’s it,” Tyson says, rolling his eyes. “We go to practice and skates and games and then you come home and—I don’t know. Knit. I’m not trying to peer pressure you or something—”

“Thanks,” Gabe spits out, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“—but I just don’t want you to feel like you can’t go out and hook up whenever you want. You can.” Tyson’s frowning now. “I know it’s—tough, when you know it can’t really go anywhere. And listen, the second you meet someone and want to take it further, you tell me and we’ll figure it out. I told you I don’t want to be the reason you can’t be with who you want.”

“There’s no one like that,” Gabe says, his annoyance at being caught out leaving him with a sigh. Tyson narrows his eyes at him, so Gabe puts his hands up. “Okay, I get the point, though. I’m not like— _abstaining_ or anything like that. Look, I never hooked up much during the season anyway, you know that.”

“I know. But still. If it ever comes up—”

“I’ll let you know,” Gabe promises. He can’t really imagine it right now, but he appreciates that Tyson is worried about it. “Same goes for you too, okay?” 

Tyson laughs out loud at that, too loud. “Yeah, okay,” he says, rolling his eyes again like that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. Gabe sighs and goes back to his bagel. 

He thinks about it, though, after another game and another loss and a few of them go out to blow off some steam, none of them particularly happy about it. There really is nothing stopping him from picking someone up—anyone—and going back to their place, or even taking them home; Tyson hasn’t done that, and Gabe thinks he’s trying to be considerate of scents, which is nice of him, but he also made a crack about leaving a sock on the door if it came to that, so it’s probably not totally off the table.

Really, the only thing stopping Gabe from hooking up is Gabe, and it’s nothing new. He has something of a complicated relationship with his sexuality when he’s in North America, and he’s not sure he could explain it to anyone but maybe EJ, who’s had some talks with him about it before. He just doesn’t feel like he has the same kind of freedom here that he has back home or even in Canada; he certainly never had these hangups in Kitchener. 

Part of Gabe feels ridiculous about it just because he’s breaking one of the biggest hockey culture rules of all in openly bonding with his omega teammate; he’s had years of it being drilled in his head that he has to resist that temptation, that there are drugs that can help with that, and yet here they are. It’s kind of sickly ironic, in a way: here he is, still resisting that temptation. 

The going out group is smaller than it usually was last year, as it tends to be this year. Gabe tries not to sweat it too much, though he’s stupidly relieved when Comes and Mitchy show up. At least it’s not every vet that hates him, just most of them.

It’s not like they’re incapable of having fun together, and for a while they follow Comes’ “no hockey talk, everyone shut your trap about anything puck!” directive to great success. Tyson brags about the porch swing he swears he’s getting for the front porch; Nate talks around his girlfriend, grinning stupidly to admit it’s going well; EJ tries to bring up horses and then gets in a shoving match with Mitchy when he tells him for the umpteenth time that nobody fucking cares. It works pretty much like usual.

They drink, and eat, and it’s nice not to have to talk about the Tyson-shaped elephant in the room anymore, even if the new elephant is the room is kind of bigger and affects all of them more directly. 

Gabe kind of soaks it all in for a while until EJ, pouting a little because Tyson and Mitchy ganged up on him about the horses (“Last time I ever take you to the derby,” EJ mutters to Tyson’s wide-eyed, fake-innocent face), nudges him in the ribs. “You with us, Gabe?” and when Gabe nods, EJ grins at him. “Good. I’ve gotta show you something.”

“What?” Gabe asks, and EJ picks his phone up and starts thumbing through it. 

“You’ll see. C’mon, boys, you’ll wanna see this,” EJ says, and Nate groans. 

“Oh, god. Not this.”

“Yes this,” and everyone gathers around EJ’s seat to lean in and look at a video on his phone. “Apparently this is being left on the cutting room floor for those Behind the A segments and let me tell you, that’s a damn shame.”

“What!” Tyson yelps as he hears his own voice coming from the phone, answering the question of who has the best hair on the team. “Where did you get that?”

“Boulding showed me,” EJ says, smiling. Gabe hunches over the phone to keep Tyson from pulling it away, though he tries to very hard. “Can’t believe they thought this was too much with the bond, I mean—this is quality stuff here.”

Gabe kind of loses track of EJ and Tyson going back and forth because he’s hearing “You probably gotta go with the big viking, Gabe Landeskog,” and then listening to him describe Gabe’s hair, chin, and the fact that he’s “a stallion”. The rest of the table is collapsing into laughter and Tyson is as bright red in real life as he is on the screen, laughing and practically pleading with Alexis to agree with him.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” Gabe says, grinning as hard as he fucking can at Tyson, who laughs helplessly and looks at the ceiling. “I’m a stallion, eh?”

“Shut up,” Tyson says, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you, Johnson. Where’s the loyalty?”

“I couldn’t keep this to myself,” EJ says, and Nate laughs.

“No, you definitely couldn’t because you showed me in like two minutes,” Nate says, and Tyson throws his hands up in the air. 

“Unbelievable.”

“You said that on camera, Tyson!” Gabe says. He can’t really stop laughing, but also feeling really fucking good about it. “You were willing to let everyone hear that! What’s the problem?”

“I didn’t—it just came out, oh my god,” Tyson groans

Mitchy practically has tears in his eyes. “What is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? We’re bonded, I can say that stuff, come on,” Tyson says, raising his chin defiantly. His eyes are sparkling now, ready to get over his embarrassment to defend himself with quickness. “I’ve got that shit locked down. Dick size decent, right?”

“Fuck!” Gabe says, nearly doubling over the table with laughter. “Oh my god, you are the fucking worst.”

“You said it, not me!” They wind up having to explain the reference to anyone who wasn’t out that night Tyson read all the applications, and then the whole table is basically overcome with laughter, big and bright like a sunburst, a relief. It’s maybe one of the best nights Gabe’s had with his team in forever, and it’s what he’d imagined when he told himself the bond could be good, normal and workable. 

When the night’s over Gabe and Tyson head back home, and then they play another hockey game two days later and lose miserably, so nothing really lasts. But it’s gratifying to know that there’s still _something_ in this team, something good and worth fighting for. A year and a half ago all Gabe wanted to do was keep them together; a month ago, when things started getting terrible, it was kind of hard to remember why through all the tension in the locker room. He remembers why, now. He knows it’s worth it, and that he has to keep working. 

Maybe Gabe should be getting laid, but he’s not lonely and he thinks this is why: for all that he can’t have Tyson the exact way he might want to, he has him this way, and he has his team, at least the parts of it that are on the same page as him. The important parts. Nothing seems all that hopeless in the face of that. 

 

 

They have a big dinner and drinks to-do for Gabe’s birthday, getting better at pretending to be in a collectively good mood for each other’s sake. Dutchy presents him with a collection of personal essays about finding salvation in your bondmate and says, “Just in case,” with a wary glance at Tyson, who sticks his tongue out at him, but overall it’s not so bad. 

Tyson and Gabe head home together that night; Gabe takes birthday cake to bed and eats it watching TV alone and Tyson passes by his bedroom and stops, looking outraged. 

“Dude, cake in bed? Why wasn’t I invited?” 

“Open invitation,” Gabe says, smiling. So Tyson scurries downstairs for cake and comes back with cake _and_ Zoey, even better, and Gabe and Tyson sit on Gabe’s bed eating cake while Zoey crunches on a biscuit and they all watch some show about sharks because Tyson made an excited noise while Gabe passed it on the channel guide. 

“You can watch what you want, you know,” Tyson says when they’ve already gone through an entire episode. “It’s your birthday for a little while longer.”

“This is good,” Gabe says, and he means it; sitting here with Tyson and Zoey is really, really good. Definitely one of the best birthdays he’s had recently. 

“Good.”

“As long as you don’t have shark nightmares tonight,” and Tyson squawks at him.

“Wow! Rude! I told you that in confidence.”

“I haven’t told anyone else, I’m just saying.”

“Stop embarrassing me in front of Zoey!”

They shove at each other, laughing, and when Tyson slips so he’s kind of crossed over Gabe, he lets out a triumphant noise and grabs something off Gabe’s nightstand before pulling back.

“Oh, god,” Gabe says when he says Tyson clutching the bondmate book Dutchy gave him. “Throw that out.”

“No way, there are some valuable lessons in here, Gabriel,” Tyson says, already laughing. He flips through some of the book, reading fast, and lets out a startled, high laugh almost immediately. “Oh man, you’ve gotta hear this one.”

“I’d rather not,” Gabe says, cringing, but of course Tyson doesn’t listen. 

“‘ _I wasn’t sure about bonding when I met Tessa—I had heard about omegas and what they’re like, the way they manipulate alphas_ ’—Gabe oh my god, just wait until I start _manipulating_ you, then you’re really in for it—‘ _but I’m glad that I listened to my pastor and forged ahead. I came to realize that Tessa is the most gentle, placid soul I’ve ever known. She puts her whole heart into loving me and caring for her garden, which is the envy of the neighborhood_ ’—all right I gotta start a garden, it’s on, I can’t let Tessa beat me—”

“Will you stop it?” Gabe asks through huffs of laughter, shaking his head. 

“No way, this is gold! ‘ _If she takes half as much care with our babies as she does with her tomatoes_ ’—all right, putting tomato seeds on the grocery list, let’s do this—‘ _I just know she’ll be a terrific mother. I can’t wait for God’s greatest blessing._ ’ Aww. So we’ve gotta get the tomato garden going, then we’re on the road to babies. We’ve got this.”

“Give me that,” Gabe says, grabbing the book back and throwing it across the room. Zoey barks at it as it hits the floor and Gabe pets her in approval, muttering “Good girl,” while Tyson cracks up. 

“I just can’t believe that there are people who still buy into that crap,” Tyson says, shaking his head. “That we have _teammates_ that do. In 2016!”

“You’re never going to have a whole locker room agree on something,” Gabe says, trying to play diplomatic, though he’s not quite sure why. The look Tyson gives him—exasperated, amused and a little annoyed—tells him he’s not sure why either; if there’s any place he can speak freely, it’s here, with Tyson. “But—I know. It really does seem ridiculous.”

“I just don’t get why they care, why it’s any of their business what we do,” Tyson says. “I mean, we have a pretty good thing going, right? It’s not ideal but considering the circumstances, like. I’m pretty happy.”

Gabe feels his chest swell a bit, and he gives Tyson a smile that probably looks too grateful. “I’m glad. I’m pretty happy too.”

“So if we’re both happy and we’re just doing it our way, why does it have to be anyone else’s business?” Tyson shakes his head again. “It just feels weird that things are never going to be the same with some of them, you know? I could always—ignore it, before, how anyone thought about me, because at least they pretended that as long as I played hockey and did right by them there, nothing mattered. But now—they’re not getting over it. I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Gabe says, letting out a heavy, sad sort of sigh, anger lapping at its heels. “It really sucks. And I’m sorry that I’ve made things worse, but—”

“No, see, that’s the point. You have nothing to be sorry for,” Tyson says. He rolls his eyes when Gabe gives him a raised-eyebrow _are you serious_ look and then shrugs. “I mean—not this stuff. This is why I don’t know how to fix it. It’s not fixable when someone thinks the way you live your life is wrong, when it’s not even close to wrong.”

“You’re right.” Gabe leans his head back and closes his eyes. “I don’t how to fix it, either. And I’m the one that’s supposed to.”

“Uh, no. That’s not your job, captain.” Tyson gives Gabe another shove when he doesn’t react to that, making him open his eyes and look at him again. “All you or I can do is just try to be good to each other and make this work until we can’t anymore. That’s all.”

Gabe takes a shaky breath and puts his hand over Tyson’s where it’s still on Gabe’s shoulder, warm through his t-shirt and under his palm. “You’re right,” he says again. “And I—I hope I’m doing a good job of that.”

“You are,” Tyson says, giving Gabe a reassuring smile. “I told you, pretty happy.”

“Me too.”

It’s a good note to end Gabe’s birthday on, and it’s comforting when he’s back in the locker room and thinking about how it no longer feels like home turf, like a place that’s fully his own. He knows that there are other guys on the team that feel the way he does and he still wishes he _could_ fix it, though he’s starting to believe Tyson when he says it’s not his job. They just need to work through it, which is what he tells the media loss after loss, and that applies here too. They have to keep pushing forward. They have to just live with each other for now.

At least things are good with Tyson, and that’s what he holds on to for a while, right up until he comes home one night from dinner with Picks and Mikko and finds Tyson rummaging around his clothes in his closet, cursing under his breath. 

“What are you doing?” Gabe asks, and Tyson jumps, startled. He doesn’t look too great, pale and—and he smells like another alpha, like gravel and rubber tires burning, something deep that puts Gabe’s teeth on edge and his nostrils flared. 

It becomes clear what Tyson’s doing in a few seconds—Gabe’s hamper, already empty, is lying on its side on the floor, and there are clean, once-folded clothes strewn everywhere. “Today was laundry day,” Tyson tells him through gritted teeth. “Everything you have smells like fucking Tide, come on.”

“Here,” Gabe says, tugging his sweater off and just passing it over. His voice is just as strained as Tyson’s and this is—they’ve avoided this up until now, but it’s unsettling to be confronted with it so abruptly. The fucking smell is everywhere and Gabe—Gabe has to remind himself repeatedly that he is more than his biology, kind of a lot. 

Tyson tugs the sweater on over his t-shirt, wrapping his arms around his face to smell the sleeves. “Thanks,” he says, muffled and shaky, and Gabe knows he’s crashing hard. “I’m gonna—” And he heads out, his shoulders slumped and embarrassed, and Gabe takes a heavy, shuddering breath and kicks his hamper. 

He tries to distract himself with getting changed and ready for bed, the happy buzz from wine with dinner fading rapidly and leaving him with just an aching sort of emptiness instead. It’s not fun. He knows this is hormones, a part of life, but it feels—worse, somehow. Higher stakes, maybe, even though he knows that’s ridiculous. It’s just a fucking bond. It’s not making anything worse. 

Gabe gets in bed and tries to focus on sleep, but for a while all he can hear is his own heartbeat, pounding steadily in his ears. He doesn’t like knowing that Tyson’s heart is beating in time down the hall while he still stinks of another alpha, but surely once he feels better he’ll just shower and it’ll be done with.

That shouldn’t be such a comfort—he should be _better_ than this. But it really, really is.

And Gabe should be better than sitting straight up when Tyson knocks gently on his door and steps in, still wearing Gabe’s sweater, not looking any less shaken up. “Hey,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Gabe says gruffly, and he clears his throat and tries to make it more convincing. “I mean it, it’s not—it’s not your fault. We have an arrangement.”

“Yeah but—” Tyson looks uncertain and Gabe absolutely hates it, because that means he’s beyond even faking it right now. “I hadn’t tried, uh—listen. Can I just—”

“Come here,” Gabe tells him quickly, understanding in a split second what Tyson needs. He flips back the covers and holds his arms out and Tyson is on the bed in two seconds, fitting easily into his hold. Gabe feels like he’s radiating relief everywhere and it’s satisfying to hear Tyson sigh with it too.

Gabe rubs Tyson’s back and tucks his face into his hair and holds him tight; between them, he feels Tyson’s fingers gripping his t-shirt and flexing methodically against his chest for a while until he stills with another small sigh. 

He pulls back only far enough that he can look at Gabe and gives him a small smile. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.” 

“You’re good at that, you know.”

Gabe gives a soft laugh. “Yeah? Thanks.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Tyson stops himself again, and it’s clear that even though Gabe can kind of understand what happened, Tyson really wants to say it out loud and is having trouble with it. 

So Gabe waits him out and shrugs. “I told you, nothing to be sorry for. You should do what makes you happy. I’m okay.”

“I don’t think I like getting knotted by other alphas anymore,” Tyson finally says all in a rush, brow furrowing unhappily. 

Gabe closes his eyes, a familiar rush of satisfaction and guilt pushing up at his temples and starting to give him a headache. “Man. I’m really sorry—”

“Stop saying sorry for the bond. If it’s the bond doing it, then—it would’ve happened no matter what, right? It just sucks though. The crash is worse.”

Part of him wants to channel Bea and launch into a mind over matter speech, to talk to Tyson about meditation and transcending biology and insisting that it’s all over-exaggerated by their culture and something of a placebo effect. But a bigger part of him just wants to hold Tyson a bit tighter and let him be upset about not enjoying something he really used to enjoy anymore, so he does that. 

“I won’t say sorry again, but if the crashes are bad, I can just keep helping you with them. I don’t mind.”

Tyson gives a short bark of a laugh. “Gabe, seriously?”

“What?”

“You’re shaking, man.”

Gabe blinks; he really hadn’t noticed. He takes in a deep breath and sucks in the now familiar scent of their bond, pine and vanilla and a salty-sweet note that’s blanketing everything now, and he feels more stable. 

Tyson hums a little and tucks his face into Gabe’s neck and Gabe just concentrates on their synced up heartbeats for a while. He hadn’t realized how much he’d felt like just flying apart until he’d calmed down, but now that he is it’s a little scary. 

“See,” Tyson says quietly. Gabe shakes his head.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re an idiot,” Tyson tells him, but he snuggles even closer and stays that way for a good long while, until he gets up again to shower. 

It still takes Gabe a while to fall asleep, even though he truly is fine by then. He doesn’t want to be the reason Tyson can’t have the kind of sex he likes; he tries to bring it up at breakfast and make that point exactly, but in the light of day and a whole night’s sleep removed from his last crash, Tyson is way more cavalier about it. 

“It’s really not a big deal,” he says, feeding Zoey some of his bacon with an exaggerated wink. “I’ve got toys for that kind of thing anyway. So relax.”

“Goddamn it,” Gabe says, putting his head in his hands. 

Despite Tyson’s reassurances, Gabe’s on edge and in a pretty bad mood all day, snapping at Dutchy first thing when he gets to the rink on a game day and then snapping at Picks, too, of all people, for saying, “Wow, mood. Trouble in paradise?” like he doesn’t know any better. 

He tries to avoid everyone, gets an unsuccessful massage after a brief morning skate and bites his tongue to avoid being mean to Gregorio about it, can’t bite his tongue hard enough when Gregorio asks, “You think you want to see Travis, maybe?”

“It’s not bond stuff,” Gabe says through gritted teeth. He thinks he might be sweating, which is odd because they always keep the massage room fairly cool. “Can’t I just be in a bad mood for once?” The unspoken _I do play on the worst team in the league right now_ isn’t necessary, but Gabe thinks it so hard he’s pretty sure satellites can pick it up. Then he has to wonder what the hell is wrong with him.

Whatever it is, he would rather set himself on fire than talk to Travis about it, and thankfully none of his teammates actually suggest that. And then Nate takes one look at him for the first time off the ice and says, “Dude, when’s your next rut?”

“Fuck,” Gabe says, and then he throws his gear across the dressing room. “Fuck!”

So then he has to tell Bednar he’s going through his rut. “I’m sorry I didn’t feel it coming on sooner,” Gabe says tiredly, irrationally annoyed with Bednar’s sleepy, patient stare. “I’ll check in with Travis after if you want me to.”

“Probably not necessary,” Bednar says, shrugging. “Are you set up okay for it? Need anything from us?”

“I’m fine,” Gabe says. “I have a—” He cuts himself off, cringing, because Bednar doesn’t fucking need to know about his fleshlight and he needs to get out of here before it really starts in earnest. He thinks he’s got a few hours, maybe one uneasy, overheated sleep before things get started, and that’s it. He wishes he could play, could probably make it, but that’s just asking for trouble, and at least they have a few days before their next game after this one.

“All right, then,” Bednar says, nodding. “Let me know if you need anything, and shoot me a text if you’re feeling okay for practice on Monday. If not, no worries, take care of your health.”

“Thanks, Coach,” Gabe says, and he walks out feeling bad for feeling annoyed because none of that was bad; in fact, it was a relief, a refreshing change from the old way those conversations used to go. 

Bednar didn’t even ask him anything about Tyson, who gets a quick explanation text before Gabe heads home and drinks a ton of water, then passes out in a fitful nap.

When he wakes up again, the sun is down and his stomach is growling with a deep, gnawing hunger. Gabe goes downstairs to think about what he’s going to eat and finds the fridge stocked full of reheatable food that hadn’t been there a few hours ago, with a note from Tyson stuck to a chicken pot pie that says he’ll be home right after the game and _don’t fuck this pie_.

“Dammit, Tyson,” Gabe says out loud, saying it again when he burns his tongue on the pie because he eats it right out of the oven, standing in the kitchen. He feels antsy already at the thought of Tyson being here when he’s going through his rut, but it’s his house too so he can’t really expect him to stay away. He’ll just have to live with it. 

After Gabe polishes off the pot pie he spreads his yoga mat out on the living room floor and tries to get himself to relax. He has white noise ready in the bedroom and is fully planning to eat again and then try meditating until it hits; it won’t stop the rut, but it’s supposed to make it less frantic, to take him beyond his base alpha self and find something more balanced and in control. Or something, Gabe didn’t really read the books Bea got him, he just takes her advice because she’s usually right about these things. 

Somewhere in that last meditation step, when Gabe is fuller and starting to finally pretend to achieve some relaxation up in his bedroom, two things happen: first, his rut hits. Second, about half a second later, Tyson comes home and yells, “All right, has it started yet?”

Gabe groans, throwing himself back on his bed dramatically, turning off the white noise, and trying to count to 10 slowly and steadily. All the while he hears Tyson coming up the stairs so fast he’s breathing a little hard when he pushes into Gabe’s bedroom without knocking, standing in the doorway in his game day suit and bare feet, with his hair still wet from his postgame shower. 

“Did we win?” Gabe asks, a little weak, because it’s better than yelling something obscene at him and he feels bad that he didn’t even check.

Tyson snorts. “What do you think?”

“Oh, god.”

“Are you okay? Did I miss it?”

Gabe stares at Tyson, who’s starting to get undressed, and then has to sit up when Tyson is close to totally naked. “Wait, what?”

Tyson pauses with his hands at his fly, frowning. “Your rut? You know, the one I fucking triggered with my stupid knot shenanigans?”

That makes a little more sense, even in Gabe’s slow quicksand brain right now. But not enough to explain why Tyson wants to take his pants off. “Okay, well, it’s not your fault, I was due anyway. And you don’t have to—” Tyson’s pants drop and Gabe lets out a sound that’s strangled and a little pleading. “Wait a second!”

“What’s the problem?”

“What’s the problem? You said we shouldn’t have sex anymore, and I’m literally going through my rut right now—”

“Yeah, which I caused, so I’m going to help you with it.” Tyson sounds like this is the most sensible, practical thing in the world, and Gabe wants to smack him. Also he wants to kiss him, and bite him, and throw him on the bed, but that’s all stuff the quicksand brain is going to have to just sit on for the time being. 

“You really, really don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to do it, geez. But I want to.” Tyson fiddles with the waistband of his boxer briefs for a moment, looking down at the floor. “I mean, you could knot me and all.”

Something like realization dawns—“Jesus Christ,” Gabe says in disbelief, throwing himself back on the bed again. He feels it dip as Tyson joins him unceremoniously, and he looks up at Tyson’s sheepish face incredulously. “You are unbelievable.” 

Tyson shrugs. “You shouldn’t have to go through this alone. I can help. That part’s just a bonus, I swear.”

“We shouldn’t. _I_ shouldn’t,” Gabe says, but it sounds weak and he knows it. It would be incredibly, unfathomably stupid to have sex with Tyson right now, but Tyson smells so good it’s very difficult to remember why. It becomes impossible when Tyson kisses him, gentle and smooth, leaning over him with his weight on his arms bracketing Gabe’s head, eyes bright and face soft when he pulls away again and looks down at Gabe. 

“Okay? If you really don’t want to—”

“Of fucking course I want to,” Gabe snaps, losing his last thread of self-preservation and ethics and surging up to kiss Tyson roughly. 

Tyson makes a pleased, encouraging sound against his mouth and moves only to straddle Gabe’s waist. He’s still wearing his boxer briefs, which is disappointing, but Gabe can’t hold it against him when he’s still wearing all his clothes.

It feels like it develops too fast again, especially considering the circumstances. But something in Gabe’s mind evidently decides _fuck it_ and gives in to the rut, especially when Tyson decides to start grinding on his hardening dick and gives a delighted sort of laugh when Gabe growls at him about it.

He kisses the hell out of Gabe for a while and then slides down his waist a little, tugging at his sweats until his dick bobs free. “There he is,” Tyson says happily, and Gabe puts his palms over his eyes in embarrassment. “Dick size decent! It’s been too long.”

“Why are you—” Gabe starts in dismay, and then it cuts off into a low, guttural moan when Tyson leans down and puts his mouth over his dick, sucking him eagerly. 

Tyson takes him deep for the next while, giving Gabe a thumbs up when he jerks his hips up sporadically into his mouth, desperate to move, fighting an urge to just grab Tyson’s head and go for it. He’s not an animal, he reminds himself, and he maintains some level of control until Tyson pops up and says, with a gravelly, hoarse voice that Gabe’s dick created, “Tell me when you’re gonna come, I don’t want it here.”

“You’re going to fucking kill me,” Gabe says, and he pulls Tyson up by his arms, ignoring his “hey!” because he can be guilty about it later and Tyson looks flushed and thrilled above his face again, pink and licking his lips. He’s so fucking hot, and Gabe’s heart and his dick ache with how much he wants him. 

Gabe runs his hands over Tyson’s ass and reaches for the seat of his boxer briefs and makes a wounded, gutted sound when he feels how damp it is. “You’re not going into—”

“Nope,” Tyson says, arching up into Gabe’s hands like a cat, a small, pleased smile on his face. “I told you, I’m just like this,” and Gabe feeds him another forceful kiss for that, shoving his hands down Tyson’s underwear and cupping his ass, moving his hands again until he can finger Tyson a bit frantically, Tyson laughing a little. “What kind of rut is this?” Tyson mumbles, shaking his head. “Prep? What a gentleman!” 

“Give it a rest,” Gabe says, sitting up a little more, feeling really good now that he can focus his attention on getting Tyson ready for his knot instead of feeling 5000 things at once, most of them about how attracted he is to Tyson. “I’m just like _this_ ,” he adds as he scissors his fingers and Tyson gasps a little, slick running down Gabe’s hand and trailing down his wrist. 

Their heartbeats are both loud in Gabe’s ears and they get louder when Tyson finally peels his briefs off and slides down on Gabe’s dick with a happy, content sigh. “Okay,” he says when he’s fully seated, thick thigh muscles twitching and knees squeezing Gabe’s hips. “You can come now,” and Gabe laughs, breathless and big and in love, and thrusts up once, twice, until Tyson clenches around him and he comes inside him with a gasp.

“Gonna be a while,” Gabe says apologetically as his knot starts to swell, and Tyson squirms around and lies down on him and then sits back up with a grumpy huff, tugging Gabe’s t-shirt off. 

“There we go,” he says when it’s off, and then lies down on him again. Gabe lets him get comfortable, rubbing his bare back, stroking the slowly relaxing strength there, and then tucks his face by Tyson’s ear.

“Want me to?”

“Of course,” Tyson says, sighing out as Gabe starts gently working his knot in and out of him, still barely any significant movement but enough of a stretch, apparently, for Tyson to add, “Mm, yeah, gonna make me come.”

“Jesus,” Gabe breathes out, still not quite believing it. 

It’s a rut knot, so he tries to take his time with it, working up to slightly bolder movements, though still limited by being so locked in. Tyson certainly doesn’t mind, and even before Gabe ventures to get his hand on his dick—he’d learned his lesson from last time—he suddenly goes tense in Gabe’s arms and comes all over his stomach. 

“Oops,” he says, and Gabe finds a deep, heavy laughter in his gut and lets it explode out of him, Tyson quickly joining him, until there are tears in both of their eyes and they’re even more red-faced and breathless. 

Gabe’s never, ever laughed like this during his rut. He thinks he might be going insane, but he knows he’s never loved anyone like this. Maybe that’s a different kind of insanity. 

He feels wild with it for the next round, and Tyson picks up on it fast because he looks excited and a little nervous. “Come on,” he says, shifting around and getting on his hands and knees so he can present. The sight of Tyson in that position for him is enough to make Gabe feel like he’s going to fly apart again, his head spinning, and it only gets worse when he dares to spread Tyson’s cheeks and look at his own come pearled at his hole, red and used. “Fuck, yeah, just do it. Get after it, big guy.” 

“How much porn do you watch?” Gabe asks as he pushes in, groaning at how hot and wet Tyson is inside, that he’s loose from _Gabe’s knot_ but still tight enough when he clenches down on him greedily. He had more to that thought but it all leaves his head in that instant, and he feels every bit like a dumb, brainless alpha, slave to his dick. That’s kind of hot too. 

“Loads,” Tyson says, laughing at his own terrible joke.

He follows Tyson’s instructions, though, giving it to him hard, harder even than during the bonding. Every bit of it is encouraged and cheered on by Tyson and Gabe is glad because he’s barely hanging on to conscious thought, giving in to his rut fully and deeply until it feels like it’s all he is. 

The only thing keeping him anchored is Tyson’s voice telling him to keep going with terrible porno lines, and then telling him to let go until he does, coming for what feels like forever, knotting Tyson for what feels like even longer. 

Gabe’s too fucked out and hazy to put his knot to more use than it was biologically intended for, so he’s happy when Tyson just kind of helps himself, squirming around on it with Gabe collapsed over his back. After a while he drops to his stomach with something of a frustrated sound and Gabe’s still a little too far away right now to completely comprehend what it means, but thankfully as his knot starts finally going down again, Tyson seems happy to tell him. 

“Hurry up, come on, I can’t get there,” and Gabe chuckles fuzzily into Tyson’s back and then carefully, gently, pulls out. “Hey! I didn’t mean that.” 

“I’m gonna need a little while, Tys,” Gabe says, collapsing onto the bed next to him. He scrubs his hand over his face and then blinks over. “Give me a sec, I’ll finish you with my hand.”

“Rude,” Tyson huffs, and Gabe pats him vaguely on his messy stomach. “I don’t need your pity handjob, I can do it myself.” 

And then, because he’s tired and knows they’ve got a ways to go before the rut has run its course, and because he really had listened when Tyson told him to let go and give away to it completely, Gabe says, “You can just fuck me,” and spreads his legs without really thinking about it.

Tyson sits straight up. “What’d you just say?”

Gabe shrugs, feeling slightly embarrassed, and embarrassed about being embarrassed. He raises his chin. “You heard me. I can take it.” And then, with a slightly hotter face, he adds, “I like it.” 

“Holy shit,” Tyson says, and he leans down over Gabe’s face and kisses him again, square and hard on the mouth. “Really? You like it?”

“I do.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“It didn’t come up?”

“Have you ever done it before?” When Gabe gives Tyson an unimpressed look, Tyson laughs and smiles big, all white teeth and simple joy. “Okay, all right, you have. Awesome. We need—lube!” 

“Yes, we definitely need that,” Gabe says, laughing at Tyson’s slightly frantic enthusiasm, hands flitting around as he jumps out of bed like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “Check the nightstand.”

Thankfully, that sentiment doesn’t hold for Tyson’s hands when he’s fingering Gabe open, though he checks in a few times just in case. “I’m just doing what I like to do to myself,” Tyson says, and Gabe groans deeply at the thought, shaking his head against the pillow.

“It’s fucking good.”

“Really? You can say if it’s not, I’m a rookie.”

“It’s _good_ , keep going!”

“Okay!”

When Tyson fucks him on his back, taking him slow with stuttering, eager thrusts, Gabe feels like he’s flying apart in a different way than usual, his need a low, smoldering burn inside him instead of the usual open, wild flame. He feels contained to this bed and Tyson’s dick and Tyson’s arms on either side of him and he feels perfectly content to be here forever, lazily getting hard again, breathing harsh and body aching in the absolute best way.

“You’re so—” Gabe says at one point, and he can’t put words to it. But in an instant, Tyson’s warm eyes are on his, locked and happy and sweet, and Gabe feels like he can pick his hand up and cup his cheek and it’s okay. Everything’s okay. 

Hours later, when the rut has run its course and they’re both beyond exhausted, just sprawled across the bed with grumbling stomachs and come everywhere, Gabe barely manages to gather himself together and say, “So that was the best rut I’ve ever been through.”

“Hmm,” Tyson says, but he takes Gabe’s hand and squeezes it. “Me too.”

“How many ruts have you been through?” Gabe demands, feeling the peace of the room dissolve as he thinks of Tyson with other alphas again, but Tyson just laughs and shakes his head.

“None. You know what I mean. Relax.”

“I’m relaxed!”

“Okay, bud.” Tyson drags himself upright enough that he can kiss Gabe gently, and then looks at him. “I definitely spoke too soon on that no sex rule.”

“Yeah?” Gabe breathes out. 

“Yeah. I just—I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. The rut was just a good excuse. I mean, you know I’m—attracted to you, right?”

“No way,” Gabe says, and Tyson gives him a weak shove. 

“Stop it, big head. I mean it. There’s something there. And I think you feel it too, right?” Tyson bites his bottom lip, and Gabe rolls his eyes. 

“You totally know that I do. Don’t humble-brag.”

“Okay, see, there’s—it seems silly to just ignore that because we’re afraid of a relationship.” Tyson looks at Gabe thoughtfully, and then he says a little hopefully, “Because _I’m_ afraid of a relationship. Right?”

Gabe has that familiar feeling of the bottom falling out of his stomach, the persistent and ever-present fear of exposure blanketing him for a moment until he sees the way Tyson’s looking at him and realizes that this might not be so scary. He looks just as uncertain and fearful as Gabe and he wants something first, something Gabe had promised himself he’d never give into because it felt too much like an imposition. But now—

“Yeah,” Gabe says slowly, carefully. “I’m only afraid of you not loving me back.” 

Tyson’s eyes go wide and Gabe is still terrified. He wants to hide under the covers, to get away from Tyson’s open stare, but he stands his ground for this and tries to be brave, because he thinks that’s what Tyson wants out of him now. 

“Okay,” Tyson says after a while, swallowing hard. “That’s—I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” And Gabe only has a brief moment of the rushing, euphoric thrill of reciprocation before Tyson’s adding, “But the other stuff—the relationship stuff. I have to work on it, okay? It’s not—can we take it slow?”

“Of course,” Gabe says, and Tyson breathes out a heavy, relieved sigh and settles into Gabe’s arms, holding him back. “Of course we can take it slow,” Gabe whispers, pulling the covers over them both, draping his arm across Tyson’s back, breathing out hope with every shared beat of their hearts. 

 

 

_Spring 2017_

__When the trade deadline passes, a handful of the Avs spend the night of their travel day in Ottawa out at a bar together, celebrating that they’re still there.

It’s kind of bittersweet because Dutchy _is_ still there, though he’s not out with them; by now it’s clear that he doesn’t want to be there anymore, having asked for a trade back in December, so going out with the boys doesn’t really happen. He’d talked to Gabe after it happened, promising him it wasn’t about him and Tyson. “It’s just everything, man,” he’d said, and Gabe believed him and also couldn’t really forgive him. He thinks it’ll be a while. 

It’s bittersweet because EJ isn’t there with them either, stuck at home with his broken ankle, watching them lose and lose and lose and—it’s hard, without him. This whole fucking season is hard, and Gabe can’t believe how badly he wants it to end, even though he knows they’ll just start up this whole trade song and dance again when the season ends. 

But Nate is there, and Picks and Mitchy and Comes and Mikko. The new guy, who they’re already calling Ghetto, had come out with them too, sitting between the other relatively new guys in Barbs and Nietsy, and this is supposed to be a welcome outing but it dissolves into complaining pretty fast. No one is happy. Everyone is tired and crabby. Gabe misses Zoey and his house with Tyson and even the relief he feels at still being an Avalanche player is tough to swallow, just because it had to come to that. 

Comes tries to reinstate the no puck talk rule and it works for a few minutes before Nate and Mikko start talking to Ghetto about making plays off the rush and Gabe stops Comes from yelling at them about it, letting them have it. They’re kids and if they can still find some joy in talking about the game right now, they should have it. 

The cool adults, as Tyson calls them, start talking about weddings, because Dutchy’s save the dates had gone out and everyone on the team had pointedly gotten one. “I just don’t get the big deal,” Mitchy says. “They’ve been bonded for what, three years now? Why do they need a big party to make it official? Wasn’t it official when it happened?”

“I think they’re nice,” Tyson says, and everyone stares at him, even the new guys who barely know what he’s like yet. Tyson puts his hands up. “What! I do. It’s romantic.”

Gabe feels like he might hyperventilate if he tries to speak, so he stays quiet, but Nate, breaking out of his talk with Mikko and Ghetto, looks right at him and says, “Yeah, Tyson’s a huge wedding nerd, didn’t you guys know?”

“Of fucking course you are,” Mitchy says, shaking his head at the ceiling with Picks cracks up. “Of _course_ you are.”

“If you don’t like weddings, you’re dead inside,” Tyson says. He slings an arm around Barbs, just because he happens to be sitting next to him, and says, “You’re with me, right? Dancing, food, photobooths, it’s all a good time. Speeches! Love speeches. What do you think?”

“I think you’re absolutely right,” Barbs says, laughing at Tyson. He seems to mean it and Gabe appreciates that about Barbs, about as much as he appreciated it when Barbs first got here and was promptly asked about what it was like to be teammates with a bonded alpha and omega pair. 

“Oh, they have a bond?” Barbs asked, not missing a beat. “Yeah, only the media talks about that. They don’t act different.”

The fact that so far Nietsy and Ghetto have had the same attitude about the whole thing is surprising and refreshing, and if there’s anything giving Gabe hope about the future of this team, it’s that.

Of course, only three people besides Gabe and Tyson know they’re in a real relationship, and that’s Nate (because they learned their lesson about keeping things from Nate), EJ (because anything Nate knows inevitably winds up in EJ’s hands and vice versa) and Picks, who had unfortunately walked in on them having sex on the couch when he dropped by one afternoon to give Tyson the bike he’d borrowed from him. 

“This isn’t the first time I’ve walked in on Tyson having sex, but it’s probably the first time I’m happy about it. Is that weird?” Picks had said, and then he’d yelled at them to put clothes on when they both tried to hug him.

Gabe wants a locker room of Nate and EJ and Picks, and guys like Barbs and Nietsy and Ghetto and—all of them who either ignore the bond or embrace it, who would accept Tyson and Gabe giving it a real go. He wants to get them to a place like that. It might be a bit of a disappointment that this trade deadline hadn’t really done that, but Joe has promised the media over and over again that there’s a youth movement coming, so Gabe tries to be patient. He wants to be a part of that and he’s glad, at least, that Joe seems to believe him, because he’s still here.

“It’s sad, really,” Mitchy says, drawing Gabe back into the topic at hand. “How’re you gonna get a wedding, Tys?” 

Tyson grins smugly, leaning back in his seat. “Oh, I have my ways.” Everyone laughs and Gabe laughs along but he feels Nate staring at him from across the table. 

And when they’re heading back to the hotel, Nate hangs back with him and lets Picks drag Tyson up ahead and says, “Whatever you’re thinking, you need to talk to him about it,” and Gabe sighs.

“But what if it was a surprise?”

“Gabe.”

“I know, I know. But—I could buy him a ring, at least?” And Nate thinks about it and nods. 

“You could buy him a ring. I’ll help.”

“All right,” Gabe says, laughing and ruffling Nate’s hair. 

It kind of stays in his head throughout the road trip—more losses—and sounds out through his mind when they get back home and they have their own post-deadline celebration: Tyson fucks Gabe over the couch practically as soon as they get in the door, not even taking their clothes off all the way.

“Imagine if Picks walked in on us again,” Tyson breathes into his ear, and Gabe shudders and comes and thinks _I could buy him a ring._

He thinks it again later, when they’ve retrieved Zoey, eaten, gotten properly undressed, and Tyson is asking Gabe, “Hey, do you want to try what we were talking about?” and Gabe says, “Fuck, yes,” and that’s how Gabe winds up getting fucked with one of Tyson’s knot toys and it’s—he could buy him a ring. He should absolutely fucking buy him a ring. 

“You’re so good,” Tyson tells him, and also, “You see now why I like it so much? You have to promise to get me this good later,” and Gabe promises he will. And then he comes from the stretch, the pressure on his prostate, and Tyson’s scent all around him, his endless stream of filthy words coaxing him into orgasm. 

And then they have to start it all over again because Tyson’s playing with _his_ knot and says he misses it and. Yeah. Gabe’s going to have to buy him a ring.

It’s a certainty the next morning, when they wake up tangled and warm together, when they make breakfast together and burn the toast in that godforsaken toaster and talk about when the guys are coming to install the last parts of the porch swing. 

Gabe drinks coffee looking out on their front porch while Tyson bustles around inside, talking to Zoey about their planned park adventures, and imagines the three of them sitting on the porch swing together in the morning sun, in the early evenings. And he texts Nate _Okay. Ring shopping?_

They make a date for it and EJ joins them on his stupid scooter and shoots down everything Gabe points out until he finds something “plain and tasteful”, which makes Nate laugh. “What about Tyson is plain or tasteful?” he asks, and they bicker until Gabe finds one he thinks Tyson will like, some kind of fancy engraving all around it but nothing gaudy enough to offend Don Cherry, and it looks expensive and that’s the most important thing to Tyson, he thinks. 

He buys it without showing either Nate or EJ first and then presents it to them when they’re arguing over the display case with cufflinks. “Oh,” Nate says, and EJ rolls his eyes. 

“So why’d you even ask us to come?” EJ asks, and Gabe snorts. 

“I didn’t ask _you_ to do anything. And it’s done now, so thanks for no help at all.”

“You’re welcome,” Nate says, and he hugs Gabe tight before they get into the car. 

So then Gabe has a ring, and he stuffs the box in a drawer far away from the sex toy drawer so Tyson will never accidentally stumble upon it and tries not to panic about it daily. He succeeds for the most part, and just as he feels like he’s in a good place with it, he has something else to panic about: Joe calls him and Tyson in for a private meeting.

“Unbelievable,” Tyson says when he gets the text at the same time. “We’re definitely getting traded to Arizona, aren’t we? It’s happening. Listen, maybe we can help them turn on the jets and get to the playoffs—we won’t be allowed to play but we can sure as shit stick it to Super Joe—”

“Will you stop?” Gabe asks, annoyed that he has to be the sensible and nondramatic one. He hates that. He wants to have every bit as much of a freakout as Tyson is having but he can’t. He hopes this is something that they can learn to trade off, like topping and bottoming. It’s only fair. “We’re not getting fucking traded.”

“Not _yet_.”

Gabe feels a little less assured of that fact when he gets into Joe’s office—not their usual meeting spot, and it makes Gabe feel on edge even though he hasn’t had one of those kinds of meetings in ages—and sees that in addition to Coach Bednar, Josh Kroenke is lounging in an armchair, drinking a Stella. It’s pretty surreal. 

“Oh god,” Tyson says, and Gabe stops in his tracks next to him.

“Okay, we need our agents,” Gabe says, looking at Kroenke. “I thought this was just with Joe but—”

“You can involve your agents as little or as much as you’d like, but we really would like to talk to you privately first,” Joe says, his voice firm and clear. “Have a seat, boys.”

“Do we have to?” Tyson asks, and Gabe elbows him. 

They sit down, and Kroenke offers them drinks like it’s his office. Gabe says no thanks, and then looks at Tyson when he looks tempted, and they both just kind of sit there, waiting for the hammer to drop. 

Joe takes a breath. “First off—I need to stress that, unless you choose to involve your agents too, what we talk about in here should never leave the five of us. Is that understood?”

“Geez,” Tyson says, and Gabe says, “Okay?” 

Joe waits for Tyson to nod, too, and then starts speaking again. “Okay. So we wanted to talk to you about the bond, and discuss…options.”

“So where’s Travis?” Tyson asks, and Gabe wants to beg him to be quiet for once but he can’t really blame him. 

“Travis isn’t and won’t be involved in this,” Joe answers plainly, looking Tyson right in the eye. For a moment, they just stare at each other, and then Tyson nods again. 

“What kind of options are there to discuss?” Gabe asks when Joe doesn’t immediately pick up the thread again. “We’re bonded, it’s kind of over with.” He feels his fear prick at him harder, sitting up straight in his chair. “Is there something wrong? Like, is the league going to try and come after us for it, or—”

“There’s nothing wrong with the bond itself,” Kroenke cuts in, leaning forward and making Gabe jump. “At least, not as far as I know.” Gabe doesn’t snap _and how would you know?_ because there’s not something you say to the guy who nominally runs the team for his father. “It’s the fact that you had to get bonded in the first place.”

There’s a dull, horribly awkward silence, and then Tyson starts laughing. “You—what!”

“Is this serious?” Gabe asks, his anger starting to spike. “It’s been 7 months! Where were you like all of last year?” He looks at Joe. “What happened to the rules?”

“We’ve all followed the rules, and by all appearances, we will continue following the rules,” Joe says. He looks completely unmoved by Gabe and Tyson’s outbursts, and it’s as infuriating as always. “But we’ve had to do a lot of soul-searching this year. I’ve had to do a lot of soul-searching. And at some point I feel we have to course correct.”

“I think we can all agree on that,” Kroenke says. 

“Eventually, we have to decide what kind of team we want to be, made up of what kind of people,” Joe says. “And Josh and Jared and I have decided—privately—that we don’t want to be the kind of people that forces you guys into a bond you don’t want.”

“But—you already fucking did that,” Tyson says, and this time Gabe doesn’t want him to shut up; he wants to cheer him on. “We’re bonded. So what kind of options can you even offer us? A time machine?”

“We’re offering you the option of breaking the bond,” Joe says, and Tyson’s mouth snaps shut in shock. Gabe feels frozen next to him. “We’ll be able to cover for you with the league.”

“We’d like the chance to do right by you,” Kroenke says. “There are ways to mimic the bond, some extreme—like drugs, for example—or some less extreme, like breathing exercises and a lot of training. It’ll take some work, but we want to make things right, because what happened over the summer—it should never have gotten that far.”

“No,” Tyson says darkly, and he sits up completely straight in his chair. “It shouldn’t have. You should’ve gone to bat for me with the league. You should’ve done something.”

“You’re right,” Kroenke says, shrugging. “I’m not denying it. We’re on the same page here. We’d like the chance to fix things.”

“Wait a second,” Gabe says, putting his hands up. “Just—wait. This isn’t because—you don’t think this season happened because of the bond, right?”

“No, Gabe—no,” Joe says, his face finally breaking somewhat as he frowns hard. “Of course not. This isn’t about that at all.”

“We can’t lay this situation at the feet of one or two people,” Kroenke says. “It’s a collective issue, but the bond—we’re not blaming you or the bond at all. This isn’t about that.”

“It’s about making things right, like Josh said,” Joe says. “You’ve both expressed a preference for staying with the Avalanche and being part of the solution, and we want that too, but we want everybody on the same page. No resentment, nothing forced or outside of your control. And we want to give you the assurance that we’ll protect you from the league. It’s an assurance you should’ve gotten a long time ago, but—we weren’t quite all on the same page at that point.” 

“We are now,” Bednar says out of nowhere, making Gabe and Tyson both jump. He gives them a kind half-smile. “I just want you two focused on hockey. That’s all I’m concerned with. Whatever happens off the ice—you’ve both proven your character there, so I’m not worried either way. And I’m with you whatever you decide.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point, Jared,” Kroenke says. “Whatever you decide—please don’t feel like we’re trying to push you in either direction. It’s whatever you feel comfortable with. If you want to stay with the status quo, that’s fine.” 

“We can’t take back what happened,” Joe tells them, looking between both of them. “But we can work to make it right. We can decide, together, what kind of organization we are, and we can start taking steps to becoming that organization. And we want you to be a part of that.”

“This is—a lot,” Gabe says, and Tyson nods next to him, dropping his head into his hands. “Can we have some time to talk about it between us? It’s just—”

“It’s been 7 months,” Tyson says again. He sounds exhausted. “We can’t just walk this all back and call it okay.”

“You’re right, and we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Joe says. He waits for Tyson to look at him again. “And we’re willing to do whatever we need to on our part to work on this for the future. But for now—this is what we can offer, right now. If it can do anything to make what happened better, we hope you’ll take us up on it.” 

“Take your time,” Kroenke says, and they all take the hint and stand up together. “Talk to your agents, if you need to. Send them to us to talk. Whatever you need—just talk to us. We want an open dialogue.” 

“Sure,” Gabe says, and Tyson just kind of grunts sullenly. They head out together, and Tyson at least manages to hold it together until they get in the car. 

Then he smacks the dashboard of Gabe’s car and lets out a frustrated, angry sort of yell. “Are they fucking _kidding_ me?”

“I know,” Gabe says, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. 

“Like, the fucking nerve of them, Jesus Christ. Everything they put me through—everything they put _you_ through, and now they’re acting like they can just wave a wand and put everything back to normal?”

“It’s ridiculous,” Gabe tells him. He feels like he’s going to throw up, and it takes a lot to keep himself steady enough to drive them back home while Tyson just lets loose, ripping the entire front office and their joke of a team owner and “Maybe they should just trade us to Arizona, why do we even want to be stuck in this clown show anyway?”

He only means about half of it, Gabe is pretty sure. And Gabe knows he’s entitled to his anger, all of it, and he can express it any way he wants. Gabe’s angry too. But all he’s thinking about is breaking the bond, and the ring in his drawer, and he feels—guilty, and miserable, and he has no idea what Tyson’s thinking besides anger and really wants to know. 

Gabe has to start asking; Bea told him that was important when he told her they’d started something, taking it slow but real and just learning as they go. “Ask him what he wants, all the time, and never make decisions for him again,” she’d told him, revealing she’s never going to quite let it go that he’d gone through with the bonding application against Tyson’s wishes. Gabe’s fine with that. He doesn’t ever want to forget it, and he always wants to do better.

So he asks Tyson, once they’re back in the house and Tyson’s calmed down a little, still pacing in the kitchen but reaching for water instead of booze and taking deep sort of breaths. “So,” Gabe says, having to force it out a bit. “What do you want to do?”

Tyson blinks. “What do you mean?”

Gabe hates that he has to ask it, his throat suddenly tight, but he has to. He owes Tyson that much. “Do you want—do you want to break the bond?”

Tyson actually flinches back, and he stares at Gabe with someone so wounded and hurt on his face that Gabe wishes a time machine actually were on the table with the team, because he would use it right now. “ _What_? Do—do _you_ want to break the bond?” 

“No,” Gabe says in the plainest, flattest tone he can. “I mean, I don’t like that we had to do it, and I don’t like that you didn’t have much of a choice, so I want—I want you to have a choice now. If you want to break the bond—”

“Well I fucking don’t, Jesus, why would I?” Tyson says, and then he suddenly looks really worried. “Wait a second.”

“Yeah?”

“Is this about—we talked about the kids thing, right? You said you were okay waiting and talking about it later, and that it’s okay that I didn’t know if I’d ever want—”

“No, Tyson—it’s not about that at all,” Gabe says, shaking his head. “I mean it, I just want—I want you to decide.”

“Well I’ve decided,” Tyson announces, putting his water bottle down and stalking across the room to put his arms around Gabe, looking up at him defiantly. “They’re not fucking taking this away from us just to make themselves feel better. No way. Fuck that. I love you.”

Gabe feels a giant, infinite weight lifted from him, and he laughs and rumbles out, “Fuck that, I love you too,” and drops his forehead against Tyson’s. Tyson laughs, too, and kisses him, and then he makes an annoyed, frustrated sound when Gabe pulls back.

“What now?”

“Just—stay right here,” Gabe says, and then he runs upstairs because he bought a ring for exactly this moment and he’s not going to let him pass him by. 

 

 

In the end, they don’t need much time to get back to the team at all, though they do their due diligence and talk to their agents first, and plan out what to say. They call a meeting with the same five people in the room and break the news fairly quickly. 

“Yeah, we’re staying bonded,” Tyson says, and Joe’s eyebrows go up.

“Oh?”

“We think it’s for the best,” Gabe says, shrugging. “We’re making it work, and as long as we have your support—”

“You do,” Kroenke says, and Bednar adds, “Unequivocally.”

“Awesome. Then we’re happy with the status quo.”

“We have some other stuff we want to talk to you guys about, though,” Tyson says. “We know we’ve got a lot of new kids coming in, and we’re excited to help with that. And part of that is making sure they have a lot of options.”

“Tyson Jost,” Gabe says when nobody really follows the line of thought, and Joe nods slowly. “We want some promises about him.”

“If he’s unbonded at 24—”

“If he’s here and he’s younger than 24, he shouldn’t be pressured to bond,” Gabe says. “And if he’s 24 and it’s suddenly a Tyson 2.0 situation—”

“He should be offered the same options as we just were,” Tyson finishes. “That goes for any new omegas that come in and aren’t bonded. If you’re willing to protect us to make things right, you have to protect them too.”

“Same for 30-year-old alphas,” Gabe adds, and Tyson rolls his eyes but nods. “No more forced bonding. If you can cover for us—”

“—you’ll cover for them.”

Joe’s smiling, and he, Kroenke and Bednar exchange looks. “I think that’s all reasonable,” Joe says. “You can be assured that as long as we’re here, any new omegas or alphas will have these options available to them.”

“Good,” Tyson says, and they all shake on it. They talk some more, about what next year’s going to be like, about the new kids that are expected and how everyone is going to have to accept their roles, no matter what. It veers into standard hockey stuff, but the core of it manages to convince Gabe that they’re serious about building something better, something bigger than dynamics.

“It’s no secret that the NHL is behind in this kind of stuff,” Kroenke says as he walks them out. “You know I’m a basketball guy, and the difference is just—it’s really striking. It’s not my business why you guys have decided to stick this thing out, but you have my respect for it. Hopefully we can all get this team going in the 21st century, and start a trend.”

“Sounds good,” Gabe says. 

He and Tyson walk out together, the bond steady and full between them. “Are we gonna invite him to the wedding?” Tyson asks, snickering as they get in the car. “Not his business—that’ll be the day.”

“I think he means it, honestly,” Gabe says. “They never asked why. They don’t have to know.”

“Right, not until the wedding. I kind of want him to come; I kind of just want to rub everyone’s face in it. Don’t you?”

“Of course you do,” Gabe says, looking over Tyson fondly. He’s not wearing the ring—it’s a bit soon for that in public, since so few people actually know yet. But every time Tyson talks about the wedding, he talks about it like some big, public thing, a coming out party for their relationship. And there’s definitely some appeal in that. Gabe wants everyone to know they’re in love, that somewhere along the way they chose each other, and to watch them choose each other again in an actual ceremony. 

“Come on, you do too,” Tyson says, grinning over at Gabe, just as fond. “You love a good victory lap.”

“I really do,” Gabe says, but when he takes Tyson’s hand he feels like he’s already won.


End file.
